(Credit: Shutterstock/Diego Thomazini.)
Snap is laying off 10% of its staff, or roughly 500 employees, citing a need to "best position" its business for future growth, according to a filing submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.
"In order to best position our business to execute on our highest priorities, and to ensure we have the capacity to invest incrementally to support our growth over time, we have made the difficult decision to restructure our team," the filing reads.
Snap expects to pay between $55 million and $75 million in severance and other related costs by April, per the filing, but notes its timeline may be delayed in some instances due to "local law and consultation requirements" for employees in countries with stricter layoff laws.
UK-based Snap Senior Machine Learning Engineer George Grigorev, who worked on Snap's MyAI team, shared on LinkedIn Monday that he is among those laid off. Grigorev called the news "a relief really" and is actively looking for a new opportunity in the AI space.
Snap's cuts join the grim wave of tech companies of all sizes that have already laid off thousands of workers this year. One layoff tracker estimates that nearly 32,000 employees have been let go across 122 companies this year alone, with PayPal, Microsoft, Twitch, Unity, Amazon, and Google among the firms making cuts.
Last week, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel presented appeared at a US Senate hearing on child safety on social media. Spiegel stated that Snapchat made 690,000 reports to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, leading to 1,000 arrests, and removed 2.2 million instances of "drug-related content" on its app.
Snap also recalled its Pixy drone last week because its use resulted in "one minor battery fire and one minor injury," according to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission.