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Apple Inc. is letting go 614 employees in California, according to regulatory filings spotted by the Wall Street Journal today.
The layoffs reportedly affect teams that worked on two recently canceled engineering initiatives. The first initiative, which was known internally as Project Titan, focused on developing an electric car. The other was an effort on Apple’s part to design custom displays for its devices.
According to Bloomberg, 87 of the employees affected by the job cuts work at an Apple facility dedicated to screen development. Until recently, the iPhone maker sought to create custom displays based on microLED technology, which can provide sharper resolution than earlier products such as LED panels. It’s also less prone to certain malfunctions that affect other screens.
A microLED display’s pixels are tiny semiconductor structures that are etched out of silicon wafers at a chip fab. After they’re removed from their wafer, the pixels are placed on the display through a process known as LED transfer. Apple reportedly built a screen manufacturing facility in San Clara, California, but planned to relegate the LED transfer process to suppliers.
Word that the company scrapped the project emerged late last month. A few weeks earlier, sources told Bloomberg that Apple had also abandoned its plans to build an electric car. The decision was reportedly motivated by concerns over development costs and the vehicle’s profit margins.
According to Blomberg, 317 of the employees affected by the layoffs detailed today worked at Apple’s “main” car development facility in Santa Clara. It’s believed dozens of workers at several satellite offices are leaving the company as well.
Reports that Apple was hoping to build an electric vehicle first emerged in 2015. Originally, the company sought to develop a car with fully autonomous driving features. Not long before scrapping the project, Apple reportedly shifted its focus to developing “Level 2+” partly autonomous driving software.
There are multiple vehicles on the market today with so-called Level 2 features. Those features automate tasks such as lane centering and lane switching. It’s believed Apple assembled a test fleet comprising dozens of vehicles before canceling Project Titan.
Some members of the car development group are believed to have moved to teams that focus on other projects, including personal robotics. Recent reports suggest Apple is working on a home robot that can follow the user and a tabletop device for moving computer screens.
Other Project Titan staffers reportedly moved to teams focused on artificial intelligence development. Apple is expected to launch an array of new AI features for its devices in the coming quarters, including a coding assistant and an automated presentation creation tool. Last year, the company acquired a startup called DarwinAI Corp. that developed machine learning software for finding malfunctions in printed circuit boards.
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