Google's DeepMind laid off some employees and closed an office in Canada
DeepMind, an artificial intelligence technology company owned by Alphabet, will close its office in Edmonton, Canada, and fire some operational staff in its UK office, according to news on January 25.
Just a few days ago, Google's parent company, Alphabet, announced that it would lay off 12000 employees. DeepMind's move is also part of Alphabet's cost-cutting efforts.
A spokesman for DeepMind confirmed the news. DeepMind's office in Edmonton, Canada, is the only office directly managed by the company, making its operations more resource-intensive, a company spokesman said. All other DeepMind offices are located in offices managed by Google.
The layoffs at Alphabet follow thousands of layoffs at tech giants including Amazon, Microsoft and Meta.
A spokesman for DeepMind added that affected engineers and researchers could choose to move to other DeepMind offices, such as DeepMind Montreal in Google's Montreal office. But those in charge of the organisation's infrastructure will be laid off, and DeepMind will fire some UK staff in charge of operations.
Google acquired DeepMind in 2014, putting it ahead of most of its peers in the artificial intelligence competition. But the recent development of ChatGPT, a chat robot by Microsoft-backed OpenAI, has boosted investor interest in generative artificial intelligence, and the competition in this field has begun to heat up.
Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Alphabet, said recently: "because of our mission strength, the value of our products and services, and our early investment in artificial intelligence, I am full of confidence in the huge opportunities ahead of us."
