Photo: Laurenz Heymann/Unsplash
Following the shutdown of the Apple Car project, the Cupertino giant is laying off more than 600 employees. Many affected employees worked on developing micro LED displays for the Apple Watch and future Apple products.
The laid-off employees worked in and around Santa Clara, near Apple’s California headquarters.
Layoffs affect Apple Car and micro LED project teams
To comply with the California Employment Development Department’s regulations, Apple filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) report informing about the layoffs.
Based on Apple’s submissions, 87 people worked at its secret facility, purportedly working on the micro-LED display technology. 371 employees worked at an Apple Car-related office in Santa Clara, California. Bloomberg‘s report claims Apple laid off dozens more employees in various satellite offices working on the two projects.
These layoffs are not new, as the company has already let go of the employees. It is just that this is the first time an approximate number is known. Plus, Gurman notes that the number of employees laid off should be much higher, as Apple had many people working on the Car project in Arizona. Similarly, the company had many display engineers working on micro LED technology at its offices in Asia.
Apple recently shut down two major projects
Reports of Apple Car crashing to a halt emerged in late February 2024. While Apple sank billions of dollars into the project, it went nowhere despite nearly 2,000 people working on it.
Apple moved many employees working on the Apple Car to its artificial intelligence division, led by John Giannandrea. They will focus on the company’s various generative AI projects, an area where Apple is significantly trailing its rivals.
Similarly, Apple has abandoned its plans to transition to micro LED screens on its future products. This is after the company realized its production costs were too high to make economic sense. With the project canceled, the company is letting go of many people working on it.