PALO ALTO — Hundreds of job cuts jolted the wobbly tech and biotech sectors in a fresh round of layoffs affecting Bay Area workers, according to new official filings that have just been received by the state’s labor agency.
Argo AI, Global Foundries and Abcam Milpitas have decided to jettison a combined total of more than 400 jobs, WARN notices sent to the state Employment Development Department show.
At least 9,000 tech or biotech jobs are being cut in the Bay Area by an estimated 42 companies that have revealed plans for layoffs, as derived from filings reflecting terminations slated to take effect on or after Oct. 1 of 2022, according to this news organization’s review of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notifications.
All told, Argo AI, Global Foundries and Abcam Milpitas filed notices with the EDD reflecting layoffs that total 417 jobs, the EDD reported.
Here’s how the layoffs break down and where the job cuts are occurring:
- Argo AI, an autonomous vehicle startup: 259 job cuts in Palo Alto
- Neotract, a maker of advanced medical devices: 78 job cuts in the East Bay, consisting of 73 layoffs in Pleasanton and five in Livermore
- Global Foundries, a semiconductor firm: 50 jobs being cut in Santa Clara
- Abcam, a biotech company: layoffs of 30 employees in Milpitas
“Argo AI is announcing layoffs of its employees,” Jennifer Honick, vice president of people operations with Argo AI, stated in the WARN letter to the EDD. “These job actions will impact all of Argo’s US employees, including 259 employees at Argo’s facility located at 1450 Page Mill Rd, Palo Alto.”
At one point, the company was deemed to be a promising supplier of autonomous vehicle technologies and zoomed into view in 2017 with investments totaling $1 billion.
Now, the company’s technologies will be absorbed by its primary backers, which include legendary automakers Ford and Volkswagen.
The Argo AI job cuts occurred in waves of employment reductions at the company’s Palo Alto offices, the WARN notices stated.
“These job actions are expected to be permanent,” Honick said. “There will not be any bumping rights for the affected employees. Employees will not be able to displace more junior employees out of their positions as a result of this closure.”
The companies that have orchestrated the layoffs of at least 9,004 workers since Oct. 1 are, in many instances, household names among consumers of tech devices or digital apps and services.
Facebook app owner Meta Platforms, Twitter, Amazon, Lyft, Oracle, Roku, Doordash, Seagate, PayPal, Juul and GoFundMe are among the high-profile companies that have eliminated jobs or have disclosed plans to jettison positions in the Bay Area, the EDD WARN filings show.
Nine tech or biotech companies, including Argo AI, have decided to chop at least 200 jobs in the Bay Area. The eight others:
- Meta Platforms: 2,564 job cuts affecting workers in Menlo Park, Sunnyvale, Fremont, Burlingame and San Francisco
- Twitter: 1,126 layoffs of employees in San Francisco and San Jose
- Cepheid, a biotech firm: 1,003 worker terminations in Newark, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara
- Doordash, an online food ordering and food delivery company: 311 jobs in San Francisco
- Nuro, a robotics and autonomous delivery vehicle company, 269 job cuts in Mountain View
- Amazon, an e-commerce behemoth: 263 positions lost in Sunnyvale
- Lyft, a ride-hailing giant: 227 jobs eliminated in San Francisco
- Oracle, a software and cloud services leviathan: 200 terminations in Redwood City and Belmont.
Even worse, ominous warnings of more job terminations in the tech sector have surfaced.
San Jose-based Cisco Systems is warning it has decided to eliminate 5% of its workforce, which could mean the loss of 4,100 jobs worldwide.
Slowing demand for personal computers and the chips that are their intelligent brains has prompted Santa Clara-based Intel to prepare the groundwork for staffing cutbacks.
Palo Alto-based Hewlett Packard, a legendary tech behemoth, revealed plans to eliminate 4,000 to 6,000 jobs worldwide.
Those layoffs would occur during HP’s 2023 fiscal year, which began around Nov. 1, 2022 and would extend through sometime around Oct. 31, 2023.
“HP Inc. announced a fiscal year 2023 Future Ready Transformation plan, driving significant structural cost savings through digital transformation, portfolio optimization and operational efficiency,” the company stated in a prepared release.
