Israel’s Mobileye, an Israeli company that develops automated driving systems, saw its shares plummet after the company reported a 15% decline in sales forecasts. The company also predicted increased losses in 2023 as a result of growing competition from Tesla for electric vehicles in the Chinese market. Meanwhile, in more bad news for Israel Startup Nation, Amazon is firing dozens of its research and development employees based in the country. And Dropbox, the American cloud storage provider, is closing its Israeli research and development center entirely.
Dropbox will let go of all of its roughly 50 employees in Israel as part of an announced 16% worldwide cutback.
Dropbox CEO Drew Houston told his staff, “We’ve been bringing in great talent in these areas over the last couple years and we’ll need even more. The AI era of computing has finally arrived. The opportunity in front of us is greater than ever, but so is our need to act with urgency to seize it.”
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The Amazon layoffs are related to that company’s shutting down of its Halo program. Amazon employs about 1,000 people in Israel.
“We have made the difficult decision to wind down the Halo program, which will result in role reductions,” Melissa Cha, Amazon’s VP of smart home and health, wrote in an email published by The Verge. “More recently, Halo has faced significant headwinds, including an increasingly crowded segment and an uncertain economic environment. Although our customers love many aspects of Halo, we must prioritize resources and maximize benefits to customers and the long-term health of the business.”
As for Mobileye, the company expects revenue of between $2.07 billion and $2.11 billion, down from the $2.19 billion and $2.28 billion estimated previously.
Founded in 1999, Mobileye offers autonomous driving and driver-assist technologies, harnessing “world-renowned expertise in computer vision, machine learning, mapping, and data analysis.” The idea is simple: warning systems alert drivers of a possible collision. Eventually, the idea is to have entirely self-driving cars that can avoid accidents entirely.