The following was an email sent out to Nuro employees earlier today by our founders Jiajun Zhu and Dave Ferguson.
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Dear Nurons,
Today we’re announcing the most difficult decision we’ve had to make since we founded Nuro 6 years ago. We are reducing the size of our team by roughly 20%, which equates to around 300 Nurons. You will all receive an email shortly letting you know if you are impacted by this layoff and with information on next steps.
As co-founders, we’ve repeatedly said that building this team has been our proudest accomplishment to date — this remains as true today as ever. We owe all Nuro’s progress to our team. Each and every one of you have made important contributions to this company, and saying goodbye to talented Nurons is not a decision we have taken lightly. For those of you leaving Nuro, we are very sorry for this outcome — this is not the experience we wanted to create for you. We made this call and take full responsibility for today’s circumstances.
We want to share as much as we can about the context and the why behind our decision, what we are doing to support those who are leaving, and details of what will happen next.
First, we’d like to share what led to this and what mistakes we made. The world has changed significantly in the past twelve months. Late 2021 represented one of the strongest fundraising environments in history. We saw an abundant supply of capital for deep tech companies and almost all companies were aggressively hiring and expanding. In that environment, we determined it made sense to invest heavily across the board and grow our team rapidly.
But 2022 has brought a variety of macroeconomic challenges — geopolitical uncertainty, energy crises, persistent inflation, and an impending US recession, among others. The market has gotten ugly. This stark shift requires us to respond decisively and we made the decision to extend our runway well into 2025 to ensure Nuro will steadfastly weather this market downturn. We have dug into company spending and cut back across the board. Laying off team members is always the last resort, but unfortunately it was needed after other options were exhausted. This result is on us; we doubled the size of our team in less than two years and significantly increased our operating expenses, assuming the funding environment would remain strong. This was a mistake.
Today our focus is on those who are impacted. We want to be clear that these reductions are not a reflection of the work of impacted individuals. You have all made important contributions to Nuro, contributions that made the company what it is today and will continue to shape its future. We are so grateful for that.
While there is no good way to do a layoff, our aim is to execute this as respectfully as we can to honor the strong team members who are leaving us. All departing Nurons will receive support and compensation that includes:
- Severance: We will offer all impacted Nurons 12 weeks’ pay, and up to 14 weeks for employees with 2+ years of service.
- Bonus: We will pay departing Nurons their eligible 2022 performance based bonus payouts (prorated for those who started after Oct 2021).
- Equity: We will waive the one year vesting cliff for impacted employees and accelerate their vesting schedules to January 17, 2023.
- Healthcare: We will fully subsidize 100% of COBRA healthcare premiums (including families) through March 31, 2023. This will cover access to Lyra.
- Career Support: We will provide career transition support and create an alumni list for those who opt in. All departing Nurons will also be able to keep their laptops and ergonomic equipment.
- Immigration Support: Visa holders will receive some notice period to ease this transition and if applicable, travel assistance.
Those impacted will hear directly from their org leader and HRBPs and will have the opportunity to meet with a team member 1:1 to receive support and get any outstanding questions answered.
Given the magnitude of this decision, those of you who are staying are probably wondering how this affects our progress going forward. The two of us have been working in this industry for about two decades now, and we are more convinced than ever that Nuro is on the right path to commercialize autonomous vehicles at scale. Despite the macroeconomic headwinds, Nuro has hit the major milestones we planned for this year and our pace of progress is accelerating. Our robots are now driving more miles each week (without drivers or follow vehicles) in Houston, Palo Alto, and Mountain View than we did in all of 2021. We launched a commercial service with our new partner UberEats just a couple of months after the partnership became official. Our manufacturing team, partners, and suppliers around the world are adding more robots to our fleet every week, including our third generation vehicle.
We have always been hyper focused on commercializing AV technology. It is why we are delivering goods, not passengers, and why we have always pushed for capital efficiency. With this step we are doubling down on that. We still have over a billion dollars on our balance sheet and will deploy it thoughtfully. With our newly extended 2025 runway we now have the resources — and renewed focus — to scale an incredible, efficient service for our partners, and be less distracted by noise in the market. And we’ll share more on this soon.
We started Nuro because we believe that robotics has the potential to significantly improve everyday life. What we’re doing here matters. It is why we have all dedicated our most precious resource — our time, ourselves — to this effort. And we will continue to do everything we can to realize this mission and honor the contributions of every Nuron.
JZ & Dave
