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Robotic pizza maker Zume reportedly laying off most of its workforce

Photo: Isolated from &pizza video.

January 7, 2020

SoftBank-backed robotic pizza startup, Zume, which recently teamed with the &pizza pizza chain to deploy mobile pizza kitchens, plans to lay off up to 400 employees — 80% of its staff — and won't renew its Seattle lease in an effort to stop burning cash.

The layoffs are reportedly slated for next Monday, according to a Business Insider report citing anonymous sources.

The news was leaked, according to the report, despite Zume CEO Alex Garden's efforts to restrict communication, including holds on Zume executives from talking to investors and cancelling a company-wide meeting last month.

Engineering, corporate development and operations employees are reportedly taking the most impact of the layoff, which follows reported struggles by the company to solidify funding from SoftBank. 

The four-year-old Mountain View, California company had 496 employees at the start of this week, according to a LinkedIn company profile. That leaves less than 100 to run a company most recently worth $1 billion after $375 million venture-capital investment from SoftBank's Vision Fund.