Марія Бровінська Work 3 December 2024, 16:11

UPD. Reface cuts a third of the team. 60 specialists will be out of work, they will finish their work for another two weeks

Ukrainian food company Reface cuts 35% of its team. What happened?

«Today we share important and at the same time sad news for the Reface company: we are cutting 35% of our team (60 Refaceians). This is a very difficult decision for us, as we are saying goodbye to many talented colleagues who have made invaluable contributions to Reface’s transformation from a true face-swapping app to a multi-product AI company. We are sincerely grateful to each and every one of them for their work, energy and dedication,» says the company’s LinkedIn page.

The company explains that over the past two years, they experimented a lot, created seven new products, made bold decisions, were sometimes too optimistic in their forecasts, and some hypotheses did not work.

«We made this decision to be profitable from January 2025 and to be able to continue investing in creating innovative mobile AI applications that benefit millions of people around the world. Thank you all for your support. We believe that together we will overcome all challenges,» the message states.

SUPPLEMENTED. In a comment, DOU Reface said that the workers affected by the reduction will have two weeks of additional work and will also receive additional pay as compensation. The company leaves them corporate laptops and promises help with recommendations and references for further employment.

Reference

Reface is a startup with a virtual face-swap app that allows users to swap faces in videos or GIFs. Reface created a neural network to replace human faces, the neural network was trained on millions of freely available images. The developers claim that the app deletes data from Google Cloud within 24 hours.