Snap's crucible moment
Mass layoffs land tomorrow, the Perplexity deal is dead, and Specs are launching soon. Also: OpenAI has a cyber model too, Apple can tell Elon what to do, and Anthropic expands its unusual board.
Snap will announce significant layoffs tomorrow, I’m told, in what sources describe as sweeping cuts that will more distinctly separate the legacy Snapchat business from Specs, CEO Evan Spiegel’s big bet on AR glasses.
The exact number of impacted employees is unclear, but sources say some teams will be halved or more. The total cuts could approach 15 to 20 percent of Snap’s workforce, which numbers over 5,000 people. The Specs org, which Snap recently spun off as a separate subsidiary, is adding employees, including the team behind the Lens Studio platform that developers use to make AR software for both Snapchat and Specs.
Specs is being set up as a standalone org that can eventually spin off or raise outside capital once consumer glasses launch this fall. As I reported in October, Snap had been in talks to raise at least $1 billion for the Specs division. Those talks didn’t progress ahead of launch the way some inside the company had hoped. Now Snap is betting it can raise off the back of an imminent consumer rollout for Specs instead.
