is the latest in a long line of technology companies to lay off employees this year. The nonprofit company is laying off about 60 people, which equates to about five percent of its workforce. Most of those leaving Mozilla worked in the product development team. The news was first reported by .
“We are reducing our investments in certain product areas to focus on areas that we believe have the greatest chance of success,” a Mozilla spokesperson told Engadget in a statement. “To do this, we have made the difficult decision to eliminate approximately 60 positions across the company. We intend to re-prioritize resources towards products like Firefox Mobile, where there is a significant opportunity to grow and establish a better model for the industry.
According to an internal note obtained by , Mozilla plans to cut investments on several products, including its VPN and a tool that automatically cleans a user's personal information on data brokerage sites. The company announced the latter . Hubs, the 3D virtual world Mozilla is shutting down while the company is also reducing resources dedicated to its Mastodon instance.
One of the areas where Mozilla plans to invest additional resources is, unsurprisingly, artificial intelligence. “In 2023, generative AI has begun to rapidly change the industry landscape. Mozilla saw the opportunity to introduce trustworthy AI into Firefox, thanks in large part to the acquisition of Fakespot and the work of product integration that followed,” the memo said. “Additionally, finding great content remains a critical use case for the Internet. Therefore, as part of today's changes, we will bring together Content and AI/ML teams supporting content with the Firefox organization.
The reorganization comes after Mozilla named a new CEO last week. Former Airbnb, PayPal and eBay executive Laura Chambers, who joined Mozilla's board three years ago, has been named chief executive for the remainder of this year. “She will focus on delivering successful products that advance our mission and building platforms that accelerate our momentum,” said Mitchell Baker, former Mozilla CEO and new executive chairman, when Chambers accepted the position.