Tesla lays off 200 artificial intelligence trainers

After Tesla has already carried out mass layoffs in Nevada, the next blow to the e-car manufacturer’s workforce now seems to have come to light. This time it affects an office in California. The branch, which specializes in artificial intelligence development, has been summarily closed.

200 more layoffs

Apparently, Tesla CEO Elon Musk seems to want to stick to his latest corporate strategy. As part of this, rumored mass layoffs are expected to provide economic relief for the electric car giant. In combination with the 40-hour office duty that Elon Musk has reintroduced, this paints an exceedingly questionable picture of the current corporate policy that the controversial tech visionary is displaying here. In the wake of the recent closure of the AI office in San Mateo, California, there were, of course, a number of layoffs. Of the original 280-head workforce, 200 are to go. The remaining 80, in turn, are to be placed in other branches. This has the news portal Bloomberg now in a report made public.

Low-paid staff will also have to go

The main task of the now-closed branch was to develop AI for Tesla’s controversial Autopilot. However, fewer IT experts were deployed here. Rather, the main task of the employees in San Mateo was to evaluate collected data from the vehicles. Accordingly, people with low professional qualifications tended to work there. This results in a low monthly salary, which is obviously still too expensive for Musk. However, since it is “only” a matter of data evaluation, experts are already assuming that the Tesla boss will possibly hire inexpensive employees abroad. The San Mateo case makes it clear that it is obviously not Elon Musk’s goal to just fire people with high salaries. It almost seems as if he is making a cross-section of the workforce as far as layoffs are concerned.

Tesla workforce on downward spiral

While Tesla was considered one of the fastest growing companies in the world just a few months ago, it now seems to be on a bit of a downward spiral. After all, the rise was not only accompanied by a high share value. The number of employees also increased at breakneck speed. At the end of 2021, the company had almost 100,000 employees. What still sounded promising a few months ago seems to be no longer sustainable for Elon Musk in view of the current economic downturn, including inflation. We are curious to see how long Tesla’s job cuts will last. Particularly in America, employees will probably have to prepare for a few more layoffs in view of the employee-unfriendly civil law.