As part of Cruise’s announcement that it was laying off about 50% of its workforce in early February, about 10% of them were given the option to stay on board to support operations during a transitional period, a Cruise spokesperson told Gazetteer SF.
Now, the employment of 35 San Francisco-based Cruise employees has finally ended, according to recent filings with the California state employment department.
That brings the total number of reported layoffs affecting San Francisco-based Cruise workers to 373. Company spokesperson Sara Autio said more state filings are to come as some Cruise employees finish up their employment. Autio did not say how many more employees will eventually depart from the company.
“As their transition work wraps up, they then receive the same offboarding benefits package that their colleagues back in February received,” Autio said via email.
The initial round of layoffs last February came the same day General Motors had completed its takeover of Cruise. Ahead of the takeover, GM decided to shutter Cruise’s robotaxi service in favor of folding the autonomous vehicle technology into GM’s Super Cruise assisted driving system.
Cruise was once the sole robotaxi operator in San Francisco, but the company was unable to rehab its brand following an accident near Market and Fifth streets where one of its vehicles ran a pedestrian over in October 2023. In the aftermath of the accident, Cruise paid a $1.5 million penalty and a $500,000 criminal fine for lying about the details of the incident, and a more than $8 million settlement to the pedestrian who was dragged by the Cruise vehicle.
With Cruise out of the robotaxi game, Waymo has gained a stronghold in San Francisco. Earlier this month, Waymo received its long-awaited approval to begin mapping the roads around the San Francisco International Airport.
Although Cruise is out of the picture, Waymo still has its fair share of competitors in Amazon-owned Zoox and Nuro. Zoox, this past fall, began testing its robotaxis in San Francisco without a steering wheel. Last month, Gazetteer spotted a souped-up car with autonomous vehicle sensors and a Nuro logo on its side driving around Glen Park. At the time, however, a Nuro spokesperson said there was “no long-term strategy” for commercial operations in San Francisco.
Correction: The original version of this story incorrectly stated that there were new layoffs at Cruise in addition to the 50% workforce cut announced February 4. In fact, the layoff notices filed February 21, February 28, and March 19 with the state’s Employment Development Department were for employees included in Cruise’s original announcement but were given the option to temporarily remain employed through a transition period.
