Autonomous truck company TuSimple to lay off hundreds of days before Christmas: report
Embark Trucks Co-Founder and CEO Alex Rodrigues talks about his company’s revolutionary autonomous truck technology and the recent strides they’ve made toward a fully autonomous vehicle.
Global autonomous trucking company TuSimple Holdings Inc. it is reported that it will lay off at least 700 employees next week, just before the Christmas holidays.
The San Diego-based technology company, which has operations in Arizona, Texas and China, has about 1,430 full-time employees. TuSimple executives are looking to cut that staff size by about in half as the company scales back its efforts to build and test autonomous truck-driving systems. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
The layoffs would come at a tumultuous time for the company, which underwent a leadership change in October after reports revealed that the FBI, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US. (CFIUS) were investigating the TuSimple links. to Chinese startup Hydron Inc.
The job cuts are expected to be announced on Tuesday. The Journal reported that TuSimple will “significantly” scale back its efforts to build autonomous systems and test autonomous trucks on public roads in Arizona and Texas. “As part of the downsizing, much of TuSimple’s operation in Tucson, Arizona, where it conducts many of its test drives, will be phased out, and the team working on the algorithms for the self-driving software will be significantly reduced.” the report said.
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A TuSimple fleet of autonomous trucks. (YourSimple)
| Heart | Security | Latest | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TSP | TUSIMPLE HOLDINGS INC. | 1.54 | -0.06 | -3.75% |
TuSimple will shift focus to improve a software product that combines autonomous trucks with chargers that have cargo to haul, in order to offer cargo transportation at a lower cost than human-powered trucks, people familiar with the plans said. the company.
FOX Business reached out to TuSimple for comment but did not receive a response.
employees have been preparing for layoffs. TuSimple CEO Cheng Lu, who previously led the company and returned in November, sent an email to staff earlier this month announcing that management was reviewing “our people spending, most of our cash spending “, the newspaper reported.
Lu told the Journal that he intends to “right the ship, and this includes making sure the company is capital efficient.”
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A TuSimple autonomous truck. The company reportedly plans to lay off about half of its workforce before Christmas 2022. (YourSimple)
“TuSimple is cutting costs and reducing its ambitions as it recovers from a series of crises this year, including the accident of one of its autonomous trucks in April, the loss of key business partnerships, two CEO changes, a drop in stock price spike and concurrent government investigations,” the report said.
The company is losing money. TuSimple reported just $4.9 million in revenue and $220.5 million in loss for the first half of 2022, according to the report. Its partnerships with other firms, including Navistar International Corp. and McLane Company Inc., have also collapsed amid the controversies.
“McLane is aware of recent leadership, operations and routing changes at TuSimple and is in communication with his team. We are in the process of evaluating the business relationship with TuSimple and will determine the next course of action in due course,” he said. McLane’s boss. Administrative officer Larry Parsons told the Journal.
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Xiaodi Hou, CEO of TuSimple, speaks onstage during TechCrunch Disrupt 2022 on October 19, 2022 in San Francisco. (Kelly Sullivan/Getty Images for TechCrunch/Getty Images)
In October, TuSimple fired its CEO and co-founder, Xiaodi Hou, after an internal board investigation found that Hou had shared confidential information with Hydron, a Chinese trucking startup operating primarily in China and funded by Chinese investors. After his ouster, Hou recruited TuSimple co-founder and Hydron founder Mo Chen to counterattack the board and fire them. Together they brought in Lu to run the company, the Journal reported.
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The company is now working to comply with US regulators.