Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, has sacked nearly 170 employees from its augmented reality (AR) enterprise division and shut down the unit. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said in a note to employees that several things have changed since they first began pursuing the AR Enterprise strategy.
“We have made the difficult decision to wind down our AR Enterprise business. After exploring our options over the past few months," Spiegel said, adding that "it became clear that it would take significant incremental investment to grow our enterprise offering for retailers and we simply cannot make that investment at this time". While some AR Enterprise team members will remain at Snap to support CameraKit, Sponsored AR advertising, and the more than 250 million people who engage with AR every day on Snapchat, “approximately 170 team members will no longer work at Snap", he informed the employees late on Wednesday.
The Snap CEO admitted that the advent of generative AI has made it easier for companies of all sizes to create try-on experiences for their customers and "made it harder for us to differentiate our offering”.
