Chegg Lays Off A whole lot, Replaces CEO, All Due to AI

In case you had been a lazy school pupil throughout Covid, think about a time traveler from 5 years sooner or later telling you that one thing type of like Chegg is coming quickly—however this factor permits you to be even lazier. In reality, in 5 years, Chegg will restructure its firm utterly as a result of it’s struggling so badly from competitors with this new factor, this individual says. You’d most likely ask Chegg to let you know why time journey is inconceivable, get a solution in fifteen minutes, and brush off this individual as a lunatic.

However as everyone knows, that factor is ChatGPT, together with different AI merchandise like Google’s AI overviews. A Chegg consultant admitted as a lot on Monday, saying the “new realities of AI and lowered site visitors from Google to content material publishers have led to a major decline in Chegg’s site visitors and income,” according to Reuters.

Between March of 2020 and January of 2021, the inventory worth of Chegg went up by 345%, in response to a Forbes article. That piece notes that Chegg had two secret substances on the time: a searchable assortment of 46 million textbooks that college students might use to entry on the spot solutions throughout at-home checks and different assignments, and a workforce in India of “70,000 specialists with superior math, science, expertise and engineering levels,” on name to reply queries from college students inside minutes. On the time, Chegg price $14.95 per thirty days.

However as of November of final yr, the inventory worth had gone down 99% from its peak, a plunge that brought on $14.5 billion to vanish. The trigger was clearly ChatGPT—a truth so apparent that Chegg rolled out its personal chatbot, but to no avail.

In February of this yr, Chegg filed a lawsuit against Google over AI Overviews, claiming that it offered Google with “proprietary content material with the intention to be included in Google’s search perform,” solely to have that content material mined by Google’s AI perform, all “with out having to spend a dime.”

Now, Chegg is eliminating 388 roles—which is 45% of the corporate’s workforce in response to the Reuters article, presumably as a result of Chegg’s huge legion of India-based specialists ostensibly don’t depend as everlasting workers who’re topic to layoffs.

The brand new CEO, Dan Rosensweig, is definitely the corporate’s outdated CEO from its extra profitable period. Chegg additionally apparently performed a overview about the potential for going non-public or placing itself up on the market, however it’s remaining public and bringing again its outdated CEO as a substitute.

It sounds prefer it’s determined to stay up to now and hope for a miracle.