Baraja driverless car start-up cuts jobs: $300million Australian company announces redundacies

An Australian driverless car technology company, once valued at $300 million, has laid off 75 percent of its staff in a “drastic” reduction.

Baraja, which started eight years ago in Sydney and has offices in China and the US, has grown so fast that its LinkedIn page still labels it “a fast-growing start-up”.

Despite receiving investment from Swedish tech company Veoneer in January, Baraja co-founder and CEO Federico Collarte said the cuts were inevitable.

Collarte said the company did not take the layoff decision lightly and was committed to providing support and assistance to those who lost their jobs.

“We remain dedicated to bringing innovative LiDAR technology to our customers around the world,” he told the Australian Financial Review.

“With a change in industry outlook, Baraja has scaled back its legacy products to focus on its next-generation LiDAR.

“We have restructured engineering teams in Australia and the United States to offer Spectrum HD 2025, our low-cost, high-volume automotive product based on Spectrum-Scan with innovative Doppler capabilities,” he said.

Mr. Collarte was talking about the Doppler effect: how light waves change to alter the perception of nearby objects when the viewer is moving.

The company has a strong international reputation for its Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) system – use lasers to allow autonomous vehicles to “see” where they are going.

Baraja (offices pictured) started eight years ago in Sydney and has offices in China and America

Those laid off include engineers, software experts, technicians, product managers and accounting staff.

One of the people made redundant had moved his family to Sydney from abroad for just six months and now had just 60 days to find a new position or lose his skilled work visa.

Another said on LinkedIn that ‘just three months ago, I left my country to move to Australia to join Baraja, believing in their expansion project.

“Unfortunately, this adventure didn’t last as long as I had hoped,” he said.

“Earlier this week they announced the need for a major reduction in staff to continue operating, laying off many capable engineers and amazing people I have had the pleasure of working with in this short time.”

Another former staffer posted on LinkedIn that the number of layoffs was “drastic.”

An engineering manager said he was “excited to join Baraja just two months ago. He knew I was taking a chance…joining a start-up and that it could be a rocky road and end abruptly at some point, but he didn’t expect it to end so quickly.”

Another employee was on vacation in Thailand when he found out he had no job to return to in Sydney.

Baraja co-founder and CEO Federico Collarte (pictured) said the cuts were inevitable.

During his last funding round two years ago, Baraja said he was poised to hire more staff and go from 125 employees to 160 by the end of June 2021.

Baraja (logo pictured) has an international reputation for its Light Sensing and Ranging (LiDAR) system, which uses lasers to allow autonomous vehicles to “see.”

The March 2021 funding campaign raised $40 million, including from CSIRO’s venture capital fund, Main Sequence Ventures, which had also previously injected money into Baraja.

Other backers included Blackbird Ventures, Japan’s Hitachi Company and HESTA, a retirement fund in the health and community services sector.

At that time Baraja had raised a total of $90 million in external capital and was valued at $300 million.

But the prospect of a global recession led companies that bought Baraja’s technology to slow or shelve their development of new driverless vehicles.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Baraja for comment.