Hangzhou, November 5: Alibaba Group, doing business as Alibaba, has laid off several employees from its metaverse division. The Chinese e-commerce and tech giant reduced its workforce as a part of business restructuring. Alibaba is involved in providing services like internal infrastructure, online financial services, retail and e-commerce, internet content, electronic commerce, cloud computing and much more.

Alibaba's layoffs will affect the company's operations in Shanghai and Hangzhou, China, according to a report by Benzinga. Despite cutting jobs, the business is expected to continue working on metaverse applications and services. The report said that the layoffs at Alibaba were initiated due to broad tech companies' trend of scaling back their investment in the "once-hyped sector." Oracle Layoffs: US-Based Tech Giant Lays Off ‘Several Hundred’ Employees From Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Division, Says Report.

Alibaba Group established its metaverse unit back in 2021, when the market was interested in the concept. The unit employed hundreds of people and secured billions of yuan in funding. The Alibaba metaverse division works on projects related to augmented reality (AR). Alibaba led a $60 million funding round for a Chinese company called Nreal, which makes augmented reality (AR) glasses.

The report highlighted that Alibaba's Yuanjing unit developed a cloud-based operating system for using the metaverse with gaming and industrial applications. Alibaba layoffs, or any layoffs in China, are often justified as "optimisation." So this optimisation comes amid tech giants moving away from the metaverse and focusing on the development of AI applications. Bosch Layoffs: German Tech Conglomerate To Lay Off 7,000 Employees From ‘Automotive Supply Sector’ Amid Lower Returns on Sales Expected in 2024.

This year, Meta layoffs affected the employees from Reality Labs, a division handling virtual and augmented reality. The other rounds of layoffs initiated by Meta affected platforms like WhatsApp and Instagram. The report included Alibaba's financial results and mentioned that the company's shares jumped 1.58% to USD 99.12. According to analysts, the company would report earnings of USD 2.10 per share and quarterly revenue of USD 33.95 billion.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Nov 05, 2024 10:22 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).