Argo AI, an autonomous vehicle startup backed by both Ford and Volkswagen, has laid off about 150 employees. The move is supposed to offset a period of rapid growth, in which the company hired more employees than needed.

The Verge reached out to Argo ai with a request for comment but did n’t immediately hear back.’we are making prudent adjustments to our business plan,’ the verge said in an emailed statement obtained by Bloomberg.

Argo ai was founded in 2016 by Bryan Salesky, the former head of hardware development for Google’s autonomous vehicles. Ford injected $ 1 billion into the company in 2017, and Volkswagen followed up with a $ 2.6 billion investment in 2020.

‘Argo is a critical partner of our self-driving service,’ Ford spokesperson Bradley Carroll said.’we will continue to support them and work together on developing the self-driving technology,’ he said.

Argo AI is in the process of testing fully autonomous vehicles in Miami and Austin. It is also partnering with Walmart to deploy a driverless delivery service in Miami, Austin, and Washington, D.C..