Apple has confirmed in new state filings that it has let go of at least 600 employees from various departments and facilities following the cancelation of its “Project Titan” electric car initiative and the microLED Apple Watch project (via Bloomberg).
The layoffs were confirmed in a new legal filing with the California Employment Development Department where Apple filed at least eight separate reports. The reports comply with California’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN), where employers give a 60-day notice to state representatives and affected employees to ease them into finding new jobs. Around 80 people mentioned in one of Apple’s reports worked at a covert facility as part of its microLED Apple Watch project. Most of the 600 employees affected by the layoffs worked on the autonomous electric vehicle project, which ceased development for good in February.
Apple decided to end two high-stakes projects in recent months, one that had to do with its elusive EV ambitions while the other was focused on introducing a microLED panel to at least one Apple Watch model within the next two years. Apple canceled the car project to shift its focus to generative AI development, with employees on that project who were not laid off being shifted to work on the company’s AI and machine learning teams under the helm of John Giannandrea.
Bloomberg similarly reported that Apple has dramatically scaled back its efforts to bring a microLED display to the market by abandoning plans to introduce the novel display technology to the Apple Watch. While Apple still maintains a small team working on long-term microLED development, the company has abandoned immediate plans to introduce a microLED Apple Watch in the short term. Instead, Apple restructured its display engineers teams across Asia and the United States, with those affected by the reshuffle seemingly a part of the 600 employees being laid off.
Apple likely had dozens of car designers and mechanical engineers working on its electric car project. While it was reported earlier that Apple offered members of the now-disbanded team the opportunity to work on other projects and sectors within the company, engineers with automotive-first expertise may not have skills that translated well to other projects. As such, they were let go as part of the 600 employees as indicated by Apple in its filings.
