Apple’s Cancelled Projects Result in 700+ Layoffs

It’s been a tough year for Apple’s more ambitious projects and, by extension, for some of its employees. First, we heard in late February that Apple was throwing in the towel on the near-mythic Apple Car, and then last month, it abandoned its longstanding plan to build a microLED Apple Watch.

Of course, Apple hasn’t said anything publicly about either initiative. Most companies rarely broadcast their failures, and Apple even less so. It also helps that even though the Apple Car may have been an open secret, it was still, technically, a secret project. Apple never once officially said an Apple Car was coming, or even admitted it was working on such a thing. Ditto for its microLED initiative.

That makes it much easier to quietly wind things down. Apple has had some rare public failures, but most of those are so far in the distant past they predate Steve Jobs’ return to power. The company is typically quite circumspect about announcing products before they’re ready, and it’s only misstepped once in recent memory, showing off an AirPower charging mat alongside the iPhone X in late 2017 that it eventually had to publicly concede wouldn’t be happening.

However, as much as Apple tries to keep a lid on its projects, one thing it can’t hide is the fallout from winding them down. It was inevitable that the winding down of the Apple Car project would result in some layoffs, and when that happens in the State of California, it’s a rather public event.

When companies in California lay off a substantial number of employees, they’re required to file Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notifications (WARN) well in advance of the layoffs so that employees and their families can deal with transitioning and adjusting to the situation, including finding new jobs or getting training on new skills to improve their prospects for employment.

Specifically, the WARN Act requires any employer with more than 75 employees to file a WARN when it’s laying off 50 or more employees in any 30-day period. Apple certainly qualifies for the minimum number of employees, and it seems this is also the case for how many people it’s laying off.

Apple reportedly had nearly 2,000 employees assigned to the Apple Car project as part of its Special Projects Group (SPG). While sources said the company would reassign as many as possible, it appears that about a third of those employees haven’t been quite so lucky.

According to the latest WARN report, dated April 3, 2024, Apple has laid off 735 employees so far this year. Although it’s not clear if all of those were part of the Apple Car or microLED projects, there’s a good chance it made up the lion’s share.

For example, Apple announced the laying off of 121 employees on January 11, well before the final decision was made to shutter the Apple Car or microLED projects. These employees were located at a facility on Eastgate Mall in San Diego, which lines up with a January Bloomberg report about Apple shutting down a Siri AI team in that area. At the time, Apple offered to relocate those employees to an Apple facility in Austin, Texas, so it’s unclear how many will actually be laid off, as WARN reports only include the initial notices, and the layoffs won’t come into effect until April 26.

The remaining 614 employees all worked at various Apple locations in Santa Clara that are known to be associated with the Apple Car and Apple’s microLED initiative. 58 Apple employees are listed as being laid off from a facility at 1705 Wyatt Drive listed as belonging to LuxVue Technology, a microLED technology company that Apple acquired in 2014.

The majority of the layoffs — 371 — were from a facility at 3689 Kifer Road that’s long been associated with Project Titan, the codename for the Apple Car project. Other buildings in the area used by Apple include 3000-3008 Kifer Road, 2945 and 2975 San Isidro Way, 3111 Coronado Drive, and 3250 and 3260 Scott Blvd.

Apple filed the 614 layoffs on March 28 and they will take effect on May 27, when the 60-day notice period expires. These presumably include those Apple employees who weren’t reassigned right away, but it’s possible they may still be offered other employment opportunities within Apple.

However, many people who worked on the Apple Car project may no longer have a place within Apple. While those on the AI and machine learning sides can easily be reassigned to some of the company’s new generative AI projects, and some engineers with mechanical prowess could find themselves working on Apple’s rumored personal robotics initiative, there were others working on very car-specific tasks like powertrains and interiors that have no equivalent outside of Project Titan.