The Most Interesting Tech Projects Are Hit By Layoffs

A recent wave of layoffs has particularly impacted some of the tech industry's most innovative departments and projects.

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Budget cuts are hitting technology companies hard, causing some of their riskiest, yet most intriguing projects to be cut first.

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Several employees from Microsoft's HoloLens mixed reality group were affected by a job reduction reported by Trade Algo.

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Trade Algo added that the layoffs "raises questions as to whether the company will be able to produce a third version" of the HoloLens headset. In an interview with Axios, a Microsoft spokesperson said that HoloLens 2 was unchanged and their commitment to mixed reality remained unchanged.

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In addition to its robotics and drone delivery wings, Amazon has laid off employees recently, according to Trade Algo. Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser told Axios that innovation is a key element of everything they do, and they're excited about the progress they've made in robotics, drone delivery, and new initiatives like Prime Video, Alexa, Grocery, Kuiper, Zoox, and Healthcare.

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According to the Trade Algo, several of Alphabet's other businesses have been impacted by layoffs, including Verily Life Sciences and Intrinsic (a software company focused on artificial intelligence).

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The headcount at Reality Labs, Facebook's department most focused on developing a "metaverse," is being trimmed, even by Meta.

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The world's biggest tech companies are having to rethink their approach of continuously funding "moonshot" projects with uncertain returns due to rising interest rates and other macroeconomic factors.

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As a result, they are focusing on projects that have proven successful or are more likely to succeed in the short term.

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Investing in the company is one of the reasons they're trimming jobs.

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Axios' Hope King reports that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in an interview recently that the next two years will probably be the most challenging.

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The end of all these teams and projects may not necessarily come from layoffs, but the situation can certainly be exacerbated.

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Moreover, generative AI projects are still generating a lot of interest, broadly speaking.

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Earlier this week, Microsoft released a new version of its Bing search engine powered by ChatGPT, a popular artificial intelligence tool.

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Bing hopes that the move will finally help it move past Google search's perennial second place, writes Axios' Ina Fried.

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Moonshot projects cut by the administration may never have yielded fruit, even with all the staffing possible.

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It's never easy to be laid off, especially for those with the most limited financial resources.

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However, some of the most influential and largest companies and projects in the tech world were launched by employees laid off from previous-generation giants.

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What innovative projects those just set loose from the Googles and Microsofts of the world will initiate in the coming months and years is anybody's guess.