Google's top secret research institute 'X' lays off dozens of staff

Since the beginning of 2024, Google has implemented personnel reductions in its hardware and voice assistant departments, and on January 17, 2024, it announced the layoffs of hundreds of employees in its advertising sales team. It has recently been reported that research company X, which operates under the umbrella of Google's parent company Alphabet, is also in the process of retrenching dozens of people.

Google Layoffs Saga Continues as Alphabet's X Cuts Dozens of Jobs, Seeks Funds - Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-22/google-layoffs-saga-continues-as-alphabet-sx-cuts-dozens-of-jobs-seeks-funds

X is a company whose predecessor was Google's research team 'Google X'. Since the days of Google X, X has been involved in smart glasses such as Google Glass , fully self-driving cars such as Waymo , a balloon internet system calledProject Loon , a contact lens device that monitors blood sugar levels called Verily , and delivery drones such as Wing . We have developed a wide variety of products such as You can also check the list of X projects on the following page.

Projects - X, The Moonshot Factory
https://x.company/projects/

A variety of projects are underway at X, but in order to spin out a project that has gotten off the ground as a company, it is necessary to compete for Alphabet's few slots, which is a bottleneck. X was in the process of raising funds from external investors to resolve bottlenecks.

According to information obtained from foreign media outlet Bloomberg from people involved, X has been negotiating for several months to raise funds from outside investors. The layoffs will be carried out as part of negotiations with investors, and dozens of staff, mainly support staff, will be laid off.

Bloomberg also reported that Astro Teller , who heads X, told employees, ``We are focused on spinning out more projects as independent companies. 'We continue to focus on lean teams and capital efficiency as we expand our structure,' the company said in an email.