Microsoft layoffs claims Robotics Research team over the weekend | Neowin

by Hallie Siegel

22 September 2014

share this:

Microsoft is in the middle of a massive restructuring right now, with around 18,000 employees being let go. And while most of those employees are redundant thanks to the Nokia purchase, it looks like the company is focusing on other divisions as well.

News came over the weekend that Microsoft has fired its robotics team, which was until now part of Microsoft Research. The company has yet to announce this publicly, they might not at all, but robotics team leader Ashley Feniello blogged and tweeted about this.

Researchers are teaching robots to walk on Mars from the sand of New Mexico

Oregon State University 02 Sep 2025

Researchers are closer to equipping a dog-like robot to conduct science on the surface of Mars

Engineering fantasy into reality

MIT News 26 Aug 2025

PhD student Erik Ballesteros is building “Doc Ock” arms for future astronauts.

RoboCup@Work League: Interview with Christoph Steup

AIhub and Lucy Smith 22 Aug 2025

Find out more about the RoboCup League focussed on industrial production systems.

Interview with Haimin Hu: Game-theoretic integration of safety, interaction and learning for human-centered autonomy

AIhub and Lucy Smith 21 Aug 2025

Hear from Haimin in the latest in our series featuring the 2025 AAAI / ACM SIGAI Doctoral Consortium participants.

AIhub coffee corner: Agentic AI

AIhub 15 Aug 2025

The AIhub coffee corner captures the musings of AI experts over a short conversation.

Interview with Kate Candon: Leveraging explicit and implicit feedback in human-robot interactions

AIhub and Lucy Smith 25 Jul 2025

Hear from PhD student Kate about her work on human-robot interactions.

#RoboCup2025: social media round-up part 2

AIhub 24 Jul 2025

Find out what participants got up to during the second half of RoboCup2025 in Salvador, Brazil.

#RoboCup2025: social media round-up 1

AIhub 21 Jul 2025

Find out what participants got up to during the opening days of RoboCup2025 in Salvador, Brazil.