Chipmaker Qualcomm lays off hundreds of workers in San Diego

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The Qualcomm Incorporated logo is being displayed at their pavilion during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on February 28, 2024

Image Credits: Joan Cros / NurPhoto / Getty Images

Qualcomm, which makes chips for smartphones, said it will lay off 226 workers in San Diego later this year, according to a California WARN notice published this week. The layoffs, which were first reported by The San Diego Union-Tribune, will take effect the week of November 12.

The layoffs affect employees at 16 facilities across San Diego, including the company’s headquarters, which has a cybersecurity presence. It’s unclear if the cybersecurity team is affected, and a Qualcomm spokesperson declined to say when asked by TechCrunch. 

In a statement, Qualcomm spokesperson Kristin Stiles said: “Our leading technology and product portfolio has positioned us to execute on our diversification strategy. As part of a normal course of business, we prioritize and align our investments, resources, and talent to ensure we are optimally positioned to take advantage of the unprecedented diversification opportunities in front of us.”

The decision by Qualcomm to lay off hundreds of employees comes less than a year after the chipmaker let go of more than 1,250 workers. During 2023, Qualcomm recorded $35.8 billion in annual revenue and its chief executive Cristiano Amon took home $23.5 million in total executive compensation.

Are you affected by the Qualcomm layoffs? From a non-work device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917-257-1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or email. Zack Whittaker can be reached on Signal and WhatsApp at +1 646-755-8849. You can send files and documents via SecureDrop.

Brave lays off 27 employees

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Image Credits: Rafael Henrique / SOPA Images / LightRocket / Getty Images

Web browser and search startup Brave has laid off 27 employees across the different departments, TechCrunch has learned. The company confirmed the layoffs but didn’t give more details about the total headcount left and the reason for the layoffs. It represents a significant portion of the company’s staff — PitchBook estimates that Brave has around 191 employees.

The new round of job cuts comes nearly 10 months after the company let go of 9% of its total workforce in October 2023. At that time, the company said that these cuts were to part of its efforts for “cost management in this challenging economic environment.”

After adding several crypto-related features, Brave has heavily leaned into AI with its product releases this year. The company launched its AI assistant, Leo, on desktop, Android, iPad, and iPhone in a staggered release cycle.

The company integrated its own search results with its Leo chatbot in June. This meant users can ask about the score of a sports match, or get additional context about an article they are reading without leaving the page. The company is also selling a Leo Premium subscription for $14.99 per month for access to better models and higher limit rates.

Earlier this month, the company started letting all users link their own models to use in the browser after testing the ability for a few months.

Brave didn’t specify if the cost of developing and running these AI-focused features was one of the motivations behind this wave of layoffs.

Cutting a rope with scissors, representing layoffs

Short-term rental provider Frontdesk lays off entire staff, on the verge of shutting down

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Cutting a rope with scissors, representing layoffs

Image Credits: jayk7 (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Another proptech startup has run into trouble.

Frontdesk, a startup that managed more than 1,000 furnished apartments across the United States, laid off its entire 200-person workforce Tuesday after attempts to raise more capital failed, TechCrunch exclusively learned from sources familiar with internal happenings at the company. The mass layoff comes just seven months after the Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based startup acquired smaller rival Zencity. 

The layoffs, which included full-time, part-time workers and contractors, occurred Tuesday afternoon during “a two-minute Google Meet call,” according to one employee who was among those attending the virtual meeting.

During that call, Frontdesk CEO Jesse DePinto told employees that Frontdesk would be filing for a state receivership, an alternative to bankruptcy, according to the sources.

The company has not responded to a request for comment. When calling the number on Frontdesk’s website, a recording says: “Currently, Frontdesk is unavailable. If you have a reservation, please seek alternative accommodations and expect to be contacted within the next two weeks.” TechCrunch will update the article if the company responds. 

Frontdesk, which was founded in 2017, had raised about $26 million from investors such as JetBlue Ventures, Veritas Investments and Sand Hill Angels, according to Crunchbase.

Frontdesk went out for a bridge round, attempting to sell investors on a new plan of doing full building management, sources told TechCrunch. That tactic didn’t work out and the company couldn’t keep operating. Frontdesk was apparently still optimistic about its ability to raise more capital; the startup had posted on LinkedIn openings for several jobs, including a chief of staff role, just two months ago.

As a result of all the challenges, the company was not only not able to make rent on a number of properties but had “little to no communication with” the reportedly infuriated landlords, according to the sources.

The startup’s business model, which is leasing apartments at market rental rates and furnishing them for short-term rentals in more than 30 markets, has struggled largely due to the upfront costs involved, associated capital expenditures and variables in demand and rates, one of the sources said. Others in the space have also had challenges, including Stay Alfred, Domio, Lyric, Zeus Living, The Guild and WanderJaunt. Ironically, Frontdesk previously acquired over 100 units across several cities from WanderJaunt, Stay Alfred, Lyric and Domio. 

Christian Reber, Pitch

German startup Pitch switches CEO and lays off two-thirds of its workforce

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Christian Reber, Pitch

Image Credits: Christian Reber / Pitch (opens in a new window)

Pitch, the company behind a collaborative presentation software for businesses, is scaling back and bootstrapping, with CEO and co-founder Christian Reber stepping down and two-thirds of its employees losing their jobs.

This translates roughly to 80 personnel, based on the 120 headcount figure Pitch has published on its about page.

Reber made the announcement in a social media post earlier today, confirming that the company’s co-founder and CTO Adam Renklint will be stepping into the hot-seat with immediate effect, with Reber retaining a seat on the company board.

Founded in 2018, Berlin-based Pitch arrived in private beta back in 2019 with $30 million in funding, led by the creators of an app called Wunderlist which Microsoft bought in 2015. Pitch had raised north of $130 million in funding from the likes of Lakestar, Index Ventures and Tiger Global Management, supported by a slew of high-profile angels, including the founders of Instagram and Zoom.

Pitch in action
Pitch in action Image Credits: Pitch

As with just about every other VC-backed startup, Pitch has clearly faced challenging times in terms of maintaining growth and keeping their investors happy.

“As many of you know, being a venture-backed company in 2023 was insanely challenging,” Reber wrote. “We created sky-high expectations for our business, our employees, and ourselves as founders. Towards the end of last year, my co-founders and I noticed that those expectations were simply too high, and we decided that we wanted to take a new and completely different path for Pitch.”

Organic growth

Reber said in the post that rather than trying to build a “hyper-growth company” built on venture funding, it’s going back to the drawing board and pursuing profitability and then organic growth. This involved working with its investors about “resetting our company and cap table,” according to Reber, who stopped short of explaining exactly what that means.

However, TechCrunch confirmed with someone with knowledge of the situation that Pitch essentially returned all unspent cash to its investors pro rata, reducing the investors’ ownership stake in the process. This means that current and past employees (including all the founders) now own 80% of Pitch, while the company has enough cash to see it through a couple of years either to profitability, or to a point where it can sell at a lower price than its previous valuation (which was $600 million in 2021).

Part of this plan, of course, involves reducing its headcount significantly. And while the year is still young, today’s layoff news — alongside other recent layoffs — suggests that 2024 could be set to follow on from where 2023 left off.

“We know that a sustainable path has a much higher chance of success than the path we were on,” Reber added. “Going forward, we’ll be a significantly smaller team focused on creating maximum value for our customers and driving sustainable growth.”

*This article was updated to include more detail on the nature of Pitch’s cap table “reset.” 

In this photo illustration the logo of Amazon Audible is displayed on a smartphone

Amazon-owned Audible lays off 5% of staff

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In this photo illustration the logo of Amazon Audible is displayed on a smartphone

Image Credits: Thomas Trutschel / Photothek / Getty Images

Audible, the Amazon-owned audiobook company, is laying off 5% of its staff, according to a leaked memo obtained by Business Insider.

Per the memo, Audible CEO Bob Carrigan praised staff for a strong 2023 and assured them that the business was in good shape… but, due to the “increasingly challenging landscape,” the company is still making cuts. This is a common refrain in the tech sphere, where companies across all sectors have been beleaguered by ongoing layoffs since 2022.

Audible did not respond to requests for comment.

Amazon has been cutting back its workforce aggressively over the last year. Across the company, in 2023, Amazon laid off around 27,000 employees across multiple departments, including AWS, Twitch and advertising. Now, just this week, Twitch laid off another 500 employees, and Amazon’s MGM Studios and Prime Video let go of “several hundred” employees. It’s an ominous time for Amazon’s entertainment products.

Prime Video aside, all of these organizations at Amazon — Twitch, MGM Studios and Audible — came to the company via acquisition. Most recently, Amazon spent $8.5 billion on MGM in 2022, which brought more than 4,000 films and 17,000 TV shows to the Prime Video streaming service. Twitch, the gaming-focused livestream platform, came to Amazon for about $1 billion in 2014. Audible has been part of Amazon since 2008, when it was acquired for $300 million.

Twitch is massively popular, but the costs of operating a huge livestreaming service are high, so the company has remained unprofitable. For MGM and Prime Video, senior vice president Mike Hopkins said the division is making cuts to “reduce or discontinue investments in certain areas while increasing our investment and focus on content and product initiatives that deliver the most impact.”

Amazon Prime Video and MGM Studios laid off hundreds of employees

Twitch is laying off another 500 employees

Cutting a rope with scissors, representing layoffs

Short-term rental provider Frontdesk lays off entire staff, on the verge of shutting down

by with No Comment Tech

Cutting a rope with scissors, representing layoffs

Image Credits: jayk7 (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Another proptech startup has run into trouble.

Frontdesk, a startup that managed more than 1,000 furnished apartments across the United States, laid off its entire 200-person workforce Tuesday after attempts to raise more capital failed, TechCrunch exclusively learned from sources familiar with internal happenings at the company. The mass layoff comes just seven months after the Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based startup acquired smaller rival Zencity. 

The layoffs, which included full-time, part-time workers and contractors, occurred Tuesday afternoon during “a two-minute Google Meet call,” according to one employee who was among those attending the virtual meeting.

During that call, Frontdesk CEO Jesse DePinto told employees that Frontdesk would be filing for a state receivership, an alternative to bankruptcy, according to the sources.

The company has not responded to a request for comment. When calling the number on Frontdesk’s website, a recording says: “Currently, Frontdesk is unavailable. If you have a reservation, please seek alternative accommodations and expect to be contacted within the next two weeks.” TechCrunch will update the article if the company responds. 

Frontdesk, which was founded in 2017, had raised about $26 million from investors such as JetBlue Ventures, Veritas Investments and Sand Hill Angels, according to Crunchbase.

Frontdesk went out for a bridge round, attempting to sell investors on a new plan of doing full building management, sources told TechCrunch. That tactic didn’t work out and the company couldn’t keep operating. Frontdesk was apparently still optimistic about its ability to raise more capital; the startup had posted on LinkedIn openings for several jobs, including a chief of staff role, just two months ago.

As a result of all the challenges, the company was not only not able to make rent on a number of properties but had “little to no communication with” the reportedly infuriated landlords, according to the sources.

The startup’s business model, which is leasing apartments at market rental rates and furnishing them for short-term rentals in more than 30 markets, has struggled largely due to the upfront costs involved, associated capital expenditures and variables in demand and rates, one of the sources said. Others in the space have also had challenges, including Stay Alfred, Domio, Lyric, Zeus Living, The Guild and WanderJaunt. Ironically, Frontdesk previously acquired over 100 units across several cities from WanderJaunt, Stay Alfred, Lyric and Domio. 

Christian Reber, Pitch

German startup Pitch switches CEO and lays off two-thirds of its workforce

by with No Comment Tech

Christian Reber, Pitch

Image Credits: Christian Reber / Pitch (opens in a new window)

Pitch, the company behind a collaborative presentation software for businesses, is scaling back and bootstrapping, with CEO and co-founder Christian Reber stepping down and two-thirds of its employees losing their jobs.

This translates roughly to 80 personnel, based on the 120 headcount figure Pitch has published on its about page.

Reber made the announcement in a social media post earlier today, confirming that the company’s co-founder and CTO Adam Renklint will be stepping into the hot-seat with immediate effect, with Reber retaining a seat on the company board.

Founded in 2018, Berlin-based Pitch arrived in private beta back in 2019 with $30 million in funding, led by the creators of an app called Wunderlist which Microsoft bought in 2015. Pitch had raised north of $130 million in funding from the likes of Lakestar, Index Ventures and Tiger Global Management, supported by a slew of high-profile angels, including the founders of Instagram and Zoom.

Pitch in action
Pitch in action Image Credits: Pitch

As with just about every other VC-backed startup, Pitch has clearly faced challenging times in terms of maintaining growth and keeping their investors happy.

“As many of you know, being a venture-backed company in 2023 was insanely challenging,” Reber wrote. “We created sky-high expectations for our business, our employees, and ourselves as founders. Towards the end of last year, my co-founders and I noticed that those expectations were simply too high, and we decided that we wanted to take a new and completely different path for Pitch.”

Organic growth

Reber said in the post that rather than trying to build a “hyper-growth company” built on venture funding, it’s going back to the drawing board and pursuing profitability and then organic growth. This involved working with its investors about “resetting our company and cap table,” according to Reber, who stopped short of explaining exactly what that means.

However, TechCrunch confirmed with someone with knowledge of the situation that Pitch essentially returned all unspent cash to its investors pro rata, reducing the investors’ ownership stake in the process. This means that current and past employees (including all the founders) now own 80% of Pitch, while the company has enough cash to see it through a couple of years either to profitability, or to a point where it can sell at a lower price than its previous valuation (which was $600 million in 2021).

Part of this plan, of course, involves reducing its headcount significantly. And while the year is still young, today’s layoff news — alongside other recent layoffs — suggests that 2024 could be set to follow on from where 2023 left off.

“We know that a sustainable path has a much higher chance of success than the path we were on,” Reber added. “Going forward, we’ll be a significantly smaller team focused on creating maximum value for our customers and driving sustainable growth.”

*This article was updated to include more detail on the nature of Pitch’s cap table “reset.” 

In this photo illustration the logo of Amazon Audible is displayed on a smartphone

Amazon-owned Audible lays off 5% of staff

by with No Comment Tech

In this photo illustration the logo of Amazon Audible is displayed on a smartphone

Image Credits: Thomas Trutschel / Photothek / Getty Images

Audible, the Amazon-owned audiobook company, is laying off 5% of its staff, according to a leaked memo obtained by Business Insider.

Per the memo, Audible CEO Bob Carrigan praised staff for a strong 2023 and assured them that the business was in good shape… but, due to the “increasingly challenging landscape,” the company is still making cuts. This is a common refrain in the tech sphere, where companies across all sectors have been beleaguered by ongoing layoffs since 2022.

Audible did not respond to requests for comment.

Amazon has been cutting back its workforce aggressively over the last year. Across the company, in 2023, Amazon laid off around 27,000 employees across multiple departments, including AWS, Twitch and advertising. Now, just this week, Twitch laid off another 500 employees, and Amazon’s MGM Studios and Prime Video let go of “several hundred” employees. It’s an ominous time for Amazon’s entertainment products.

Prime Video aside, all of these organizations at Amazon — Twitch, MGM Studios and Audible — came to the company via acquisition. Most recently, Amazon spent $8.5 billion on MGM in 2022, which brought more than 4,000 films and 17,000 TV shows to the Prime Video streaming service. Twitch, the gaming-focused livestream platform, came to Amazon for about $1 billion in 2014. Audible has been part of Amazon since 2008, when it was acquired for $300 million.

Twitch is massively popular, but the costs of operating a huge livestreaming service are high, so the company has remained unprofitable. For MGM and Prime Video, senior vice president Mike Hopkins said the division is making cuts to “reduce or discontinue investments in certain areas while increasing our investment and focus on content and product initiatives that deliver the most impact.”

Amazon Prime Video and MGM Studios laid off hundreds of employees

Twitch is laying off another 500 employees

Sorare, NFTs, web3

NFT fantasy sport startup Sorare lays off 13%, as web3 gaming sputters

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Sorare, NFTs, web3

Image Credits: Sorare

Web3-enabled fantasy sports platform Sorare laid off 22 employees based in its New York office in February. The move comes as the startup wants certain teams to be concentrated at the company’s Paris headquarters to improve communication and efficiency, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.

“As we plan for our next stage of growth, Sorare has made the decision to centralize some of our functions at our Paris HQ,” Nicolas Julia, the co-founder and CEO of Sorare, told TechCrunch through email. “This primarily affects our product development team as we believe that bringing that team together in the same space in Paris will allow them to collaborate more effectively as they continue to build best in class products across our football, baseball and basketball offerings.”

An additional 11 employees in the New York office were asked to relocate to Paris, a source familiar with the matter said. The company will backfill most of these laid-off roles in Paris, according to Julia, with plans to hire more than 20 roles in the next six months.

Sorare is not shutting down its New York office. It will keep certain teams there like those that work with U.S. customers or on its U.S. brand partnerships with leagues like the MLB and NBA, according to Julia. Sorare’s partnerships with these sports leagues are locked in for several years, a source added.

While a source familiar with the matter said that these layoffs were not financially driven, the source did add that like many other web3 companies, the time horizon for how long it will take Sorare to reach its growth goals is longer than it originally thought. Sorare’s users can buy and sell NFT cards from other players on its platforms, although Sorare primarily makes its money by issuing and selling new cards. Sorare saw $200 million in user transaction volume in 2023, a source familiar with the situation said. The company declined to say if it was profitable or what runway it had left.

Sorare hasn’t raised capital since its $680 million Series B round in 2021, which valued the company at $4 billion. According to secondary data platforms, Sorare hasn’t been garnering much interest from investors there. To be fair, the declining interest isn’t strictly an issue for Sorare — web3 companies have largely fallen out of favor with investors. Startups in the category raised $7 billion in 2023, according to Crunchbase data, a drop of 74% from 2022’s $26 billion. For context, overall venture funding dropped 38% in the same timeframe.

Web3 companies focused on gaming have struggled to find meaningful traction. Last month, video game–focused VCs told TechCrunch that the market for web3 games turned out to be significantly smaller than some investors had hoped. This has become evident.

Mythical Games, a web3 gaming startup, raised nearly $300 million in venture money before holding three rounds of layoffs. Dapper Labs, another startup in the category, has also held numerous rounds of layoffs.

This is not to say Sorare will see the same fate. The company has an active community of nearly 13,000 people on Reddit posting regularly about the fantasy games and a community of third-party media dedicated to these competitions. Hopefully, even if the web3 winter continues, Sorare’s reorg will be enough.

Amazon Agility Robotics Digit handling a tub in a warehouse

Agility Robotics lays off some staff amid commercialization focus

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Amazon Agility Robotics Digit handling a tub in a warehouse

Image Credits: Amazon

Agility Robotics on Thursday confirmed that it has laid off a “small number” of employees. The well-funded Oregon-based firm says the job loss is part of a company-wide focus on commercialization efforts.

“As part of Agility’s ongoing efforts to structure the company for success, we have parted ways with a small number of employees that were not central to core product development and commercialization,” the company wrote in a statement provided to TechCrunch. “At the same time, we are focused on meeting the extraordinary demand for bipedal robots across industrial use cases. That means ramping up production of Digit while continuing to win top-tier global customers, and adding new roles that meet these goals. We believe today’s actions will allow us to focus on the areas that drive productization, commercialization, and production of Digit.”

Agility was ahead of the industrial humanoid curve with its bipedal robot, Digit. The firm was spun out of research conducted at Oregon State University. There’s been no lack of interest in its impressive legged robots over the years. Ford was an early champion, as Agility explored Digit’s last-mile-delivery potential. Ultimately, however, those efforts were placed on the back burner, as the company shifted focus to understaffed warehouses.

There’s been no lack of funding for Agility’s efforts, despite a general slowdown in investments in and adoption of robotic systems, both of which can be seen as corrections following a massive pandemic-fueled boom.

Two years ago this month, the company announced a $150 million Series B. Amazon notably participated in the round by way of its Industrial Innovation Fund. The retail giant subsequently announced that it would pilot Digits as part of its fulfillment center workflow. The pilots have since ended, but neither company has announced next steps.

A number of other humanoid robotics firms have announced their own pilots in recent months, including Figure with BMW and Apptronik with Mercedes. Last month at Modex, Agility showcased updates to Digit’s end effectors designed specifically for automotive manufacturing workflows.

Agility has also made a number of high-profile hires over the past year, including Magic Leap CEO Peggy Johnson joining as chief executive, Fetch CEO Melonee Wise as CTO and former Apple and Ford executive Aindrea Campbell in as COO.

The company’s jobs page currently lists five open roles, largely focused on engineering and manufacturing.