NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Staff cuts revealed by Complete Genomics last week will affect a total of 186 employees, or more than half of its workforce, according to a company filing with the state of California last week.
As recently reported by GeneomeWeb, the layoffs are part of a strategic shift for BGI, which acquired Complete Genomics in 2013. Going forward, Complete will serve as a research site for BGI that will focus on advanced clinical research and support BGI's noninvasive prenatal testing business, as well as its entry into the benchtop sequencing market in China. As a result of the shift, the commercialization of Complete Genomics' Revolocity high-throughput human genome sequencing platform has been halted.
According to the company's Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN, notice, received by the State of California Employment Development Department on Nov. 23, the firm plans to lay off 145 employees at its Mountain View headquarters, as well as 15 in San Jose, 13 in Sunnyvale, and six in San Francisco. The staff cuts will be effective Jan. 22, 2016.
Complete Genomics' website states that the company has more than 300 employees.