Amazon CEO Andy Jassy speaks at the GeekWire Summit on October 5, 2021 in Seattle.
David Ryder | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Amazon The company has stopped secretly developing a family fertility tracker, according to internal documents and people familiar with the matter.
The company has been working for the past four years to launch a fertility monitoring device and accompanying smartphone app as part of a project codenamed “Encore,” people familiar with the matter said. according to. Sources say the team is part of Amazon’s Grand Challenge, also known as the Special Projects division.
Last month, Amazon told Tracker staff it would be disbanding the team. The laid-off employees will remain on Amazon’s payroll until December 27, but are not expected to work during that time, according to documents reviewed by CNBC.
If employees don’t find another job by then, Amazon will offer them a “one-time” severance package equal to one week’s pay for every six months they’ve been with the company, the filing said.
Amazon Chief Executive Andy Jassy has been grappling with cost issues companywide since late 2022, when inflationary pressures and rising interest rates slowed technology and consumer markets. In addition to cutting more than 27,000 jobs, Jassy has shuttered multiple projects, ranging from mobile sidewalk robots to telemedicine and rapid delivery services.
This wave of frugality is a stark departure from the approach taken by Jassy’s predecessor, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who was known for greenlighting experimental projects and giving employees more room to thrive, even as they burned money along the way. The Grand Challenge was one of the symbols of that era.
Bezos launched the Grand Challenge in 2014 as a way for Amazon to tinker with riskier projects that may or may not come to fruition. Grand Challenge is the brains behind a pair of connected glasses equipped with Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant and machine learning tools for analyzing medical records.
Other Grand Challenge projects such as Amazon Care telemedicine service, video calling device for children, virtual travel service and Augmented reality headsets for meetings Discontinued.
On the morning of October 28, fertility tracker staff were told to participate in a video conference where their team leader informed them that the program was ending. A person familiar with the matter said the call lasted about two minutes.
A layoff notice seen by CNBC was signed by Doug Weibel, who takes over the helm of Grand Challenge following the departure of founder Babak Parviz in 2022 people. Join Madrona Venture Group.
Amazon spokesperson Margaret Callahan confirmed the layoffs and the project’s existence in a statement to CNBC. Callahan confirmed that about 100 employees will be laid off.
“Following a recent review, we have decided to terminate this program in Grand Challenge, and we are working directly with employees whose roles have been impacted to support them through the transition and help them find other opportunities within Amazon,” Callahan said.
Predicting fertility through saliva
The project stems from the company’s 2020 acquisition of Wisconsin startup bluDiagnostics, sources said.
BluDiagnostics was founded in 2015 by Weibel, Katie Brenner and Jodi Schroll, who all joined Grand Challenge following the acquisition. The startup has developed a thermometer-like device called FertilityFinder to help women track their fertility at home by testing saliva and measuring two key hormones: estradiol and progesterone. Test results can be viewed through the corresponding application.
business insider Various aspects of the fertility device were reported in 2022, when it was codenamed Project Tiberius.
The team is developing its own saliva collection device and mobile app that can predict when a user is likely to be in their fertile window. Users can also log their menstrual symptoms, sexual activity and other data to help track their fertility. There are also similar products on the market from companies like Inne, Oova, Ava and Mira, as well as fertility and ovulation tracking apps like Flo, Clue and Max Levchin’s Glow.
Amazon originally planned to release the product this year, but delayed the release because the team encountered technical issues with the device, a person familiar with the matter said. It’s a costly endeavor that requires significant upfront investment in laboratory research and development in addition to high salaries for scientists and engineers, sources said, adding that the team’s weekly overhead costs were about $1.5 million. Amazon did not comment on the figure.
Only one project in the Grand Challenge is still active. The focus is on health technology, people familiar with the matter said.
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