Udemy, a San Francisco company that sells online educational courses and training, is laying off about 280 workers — but plans to replace some in what it’s calling “lower cost geographies.”
The education tech company announced the relocate in a Monday filing with the Securities and Exmodify Commission. It’s a sizable, nearly 20% cut: Udemy reported having 1,443 full-time employees worldwide as of December, despite a 10% layoff in February 2023.
The new layoff round follows a “Strategic Business Update” in July, which Udemy announced with the news that it had lost $50 million in the first six months of this year. The company vowed to shift its focus to larger customers and boost efficiency, in part by “reallocating resources.” In Monday’s SEC filing, announcing the new layoffs, Udemy put a finer point on that idea: It “expects to rehire approximately half of the impacted roles, primarily in lower cost geographies.”
Udemy spokesperson Paxton Mittleman notified SFGATE in a Friday email that more than 60% of the company’s business comes from outside the United States, and declared the shift to cheaper areas will include both open positions and existing teams.
“We have undertaken this restructuring to ensure we remain a durable, competitive company well into the future,” Mittleman wrote. “While we have no plans for additional layoffs at this time, we cannot guarantee future market conditions or corporate developments.”
She added that workers were notified about whether they’d be laid off on Sept. 12, but declared the actual cuts and relocates would happen during the last three months of 2024 and first three months of 2025. “Impacted Udemates,” she declared, will receive severance pay and support with continued healthcare coverage.
Mittleman declined to answer SFGATE’s question about the roles and locations of workers hit in the layoff round. Udemy is headquartered in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood, and also has offices in Denver, Austin, India, Australia, Ireland and Turkey.
Udemy touted 69 million global “learners” in its finish-of-2023 filing with the SEC, and has seen revenues grow over the past few years, but profits have remained elusive. The company’s stock has dropped 40% since the launchning of 2024, so its valuation currently hovers about $1.2 billion.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated at 5:12 p.m., Sept. 20, to correct the pronouns applyd by Udemy’s spokesperson.
Hear of anything happening at Udemy or another Bay Area tech company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at stephen.council@sfgate.com or on Signal at 628-204-5452.
Leave a Reply