Self-driving tech startup Baraja just lost 75% of its workforce
Sydney-based autonomous driving startup Baraja has laid off about 75% of its workforce.
The layoffs come just a month after the company received an undisclosed level of investment from Swedish auto safety company Veoneer, which Baraja CEO and co-founder Federico Collarte said “confirms the company’s market traction”.
Baraja was founded in 2015 by Collarte and Cibby Pulikkaseril to solve the problems faced by existing LiDAR (light detection and ranging) systems used to provide visibility to autonomous vehicles.
It is headquartered in Ryde, an industrial suburb in northern Sydney.
The startup previously raised more than $90 million, including $45 million (US$32 million) in a Series A in 2019 backed by Sequoia China, Blackbird Ventures and CSIRO’s VC fund, Main Sequence, and another $40 million in 2021, led by Blackbird, at a $300 million valuation. Blackbird kicked off Baraja’s starting lap in 2016.
Japan’s Hitachi Construction Machinery is also a major strategic financier and user of the technology. Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue Metals mining company as a client.
But fully self-driving (FSD) projects had a torrid time in 2022, with the Ford and VW-backed Argo AI project the most notable casualty. Ford then poured more than $1 billion into the project over five years announced it would close in Octoberhitting the $2.7 billion balance sheet.
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta v11 software update was postponed again on the weekend have already missed the November 2022 release deadline. esla FSD Beta v11 is both an exciting and scary move as it is supposed to merge Tesla’s FSD and Autopilot highway stacks.
Last month a former Tesla engineer admitted that the company’s 2016 demonstration of the technology was faked.
The United States Department of Justice is currently researching Tesla technology
And even a big critic and rival of Tesla’s FSD system Spent $600,000 on a Superbowl ad calling for the technology to be banned.
Baraja uses a different technology than the Tesla systems, but despite strong headwinds and negative sentiment towards autonomous driving, CEO Federico Collarte said they had little choice but to scale back operations.
“With a change in industry outlook, Baraja has scaled back its legacy products to focus on its next-generation LiDAR. We restructured the engineering teams in Australia and the United States to deliver Spectrum HD 2025, our low-cost, high-volume automotive product, built on Spectrum-Scan with breakthrough Doppler capabilities,” he said.
“We have not taken this decision lightly and are committed to providing support and assistance to those affected by these changes. We remain committed to delivering breakthrough LiDAR technology to our customers around the world.”
The company has not confirmed the level of job cuts, but more than 160 people worked for Baraja, so if the 75% figure is correct, only 40 remain amid the loss of 120 jobs.
