Apple laid off 200 employees from its autonomous vehicle group, Project Titan. Other staff affected by the shake-up, revealed Thursday, will be transferred elsewhere in Apple.
New Leadership, New Structure
An Apple spokesperson confirmed the layoffs to CNBC. They said:
“We have an incredibly talented team working on autonomous systems and associated technologies at Apple. As the team focuses their work on several key areas for 2019, some groups are being moved to projects in other parts of the company, where they will support machine learning and other initiatives, across all of Apple.”
The spokesperson insisted that Apple “continue to believe there is a huge opportunity with autonomous systems,” and “that Apple has unique capabilities to contribute” in the field. “This is the most ambitious machine learning project ever,” they added.
Apple previously cut back on Project Titan in late 2017. In October that year, it emerged that hundreds of members of the then 1000 strong team had been laid-off or resigned. This latest restructure comes relatively early on in the reign of former Tesla VP Doug Field. He was recruited in August to lead Project Titan, alongside Bob Mansfield.