A Kitchener-based robotics company has laid off 14 per cent of its global staff.
On Tuesday, Avidbots Corp. confirmed to CTV News Kitchener in an email it had “made the very difficult decision.”
The company said it had around 350 staffers before the layoff, meaning around 50 employees were cut. The number of local jobs lost, if any, was not shared by the company.
“This one-time restructuring will affect 14 percent of our workforce globally,” a statement from Faizan Sheikh, CEO and co-founder of Avidbots Corp. “We are grateful for the contributions of our departing Avidbotters and will support them with enhanced separation packages, benefits continuation options, reference letters, outplacement services, as well as networking opportunities.”
The statement said the decision to restructure comes as the company’s global team looks to better align operations with macroeconomic conditions and improve efficiency in delivering new products to market.
“While this was not an easy decision to make, we believe this transition is an important step in going back to our roots as a lean and efficient robotics company,” Sheikh’s statement said.
Avidbots Corp. designs and manufactures the Neo autonomous commercial floor cleaner – a robotic device that became increasingly popular as Canadians returned to commercial spaces following lockdowns.
Autonomous floor scrubbers were increasingly being used at airports, hospitals, universities, sports facilities and shopping malls as COVID-19 sharpens the public's focus on the cleanliness of public spaces.
Towards the end of 2020, Deloitte released its annual Technology Fast 50 companies, which named Avidbots Corp. as the number 8th fastest growing Canadian tech company.
MASS LAYOFFS ACROSS WATERLOO REGION
A handful of tech companies with hubs in Waterloo region have announced layoffs over the last few months.
Notably, tech giant Google announced last month it would be laying off 12,000 employees.
It was not clear how many Google employees were laid off locally.
In November last year, Communitech announced it had laid off 10 per cent of its workforce.
Weeks earlier, Kitchener-based education tech company D2L announced a mass layoff affecting 5 per cent of its workforce – including 16 employees in Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge.
At the time, the tech company issued a brief statement saying it believes these changes will enable it to achieve continued success within the current economic environment.
SILICON VALLEY BANK COLLAPSE
Avidbots Corp. confirmed its announcement of the mass layoff was not connected to the failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).
The bank’s failure did lead to a weekend of crisis management in Waterloo region as roughly 10 per cent of tech start-ups in Canada faced a cash crunch following the bank’s collapse.
“I think one phrase was ‘extinction event,’” said Chris Albinson, the president and CEO of Communitech. “There was really a fear that a whole generation of founders and companies that we’ve been working so hard to build over the last five to seven years could collapse.”
According to Albinson, the fallout in Waterloo region impacted about 120 of the 1,200 start-ups directly.
