Icon Technology Inc., a prominent Austin startup that has garnered national attention for its 3D-printed homes, said it has made a "small number" of layoffs.
The company — which has made headlines for huge funding rounds, a 3D-printed neighborhood coming to Georgetown and a $57 million contract with NASA — acknowledged the job cuts in a Jan. 24 statement to Austin Business Journal but declined to disclose details, including the number of jobs affected.
"We made a difficult, but necessary decision recently to re-align our team and team size to current market conditions. During this process, we thoughtfully worked to ensure that we were structured to execute our near term strategic objectives and priorities while balancing the financial realities of the economy," the statement said. "A small number of employees were a part of this restructuring including some who were offered new roles in different divisions."
Since Jan. 21, at least four former employees have posted about layoffs on LinkedIn, with listed job titles ranging from workplace experience specialist to product test engineer to technical recruiter.
The layoffs come as businesses big and small pare back their workforces and recession fears mount nationwide. Tech giants such as Google parent Alphabet Inc., Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Inc. and Salesforce Inc. have shed jobs, along with smaller companies like Cart.com and RateGenius.
And it's another blow for Icon, which saw its South Austin headquarters engulfed in flames in November. Nobody was injured in the fire and the company later said it did not "expect meaningful impact to our ongoing business activities" because its 3D printer fleet was not in the building that caught fire.
Before that, Icon had been flying high. It raised a massive $185 million funding round in February, which came with a reported valuation of nearly $2 billion. In November, Time magazine named a 3D-printed prototype house built by the company one of the top inventions of 2022.
CEO Jason Ballard, Alex Le Roux and Evan Loomis co-founded the company in 2017. It has earned accolades for its novel approach to building that the company says can save on time and materials.
Icon's Georgetown neighborhood is the first example of its 3D-printing technology being used at scale in the United States. Working with Lennar Corp., it plans to build 100 homes with prices starting in the mid-$400,000s, inside the larger Wolf Ranch master-planned community.
"For the first time in the history of the world, what we’re witnessing here is a fleet of robots building an entire community of homes. And not just any homes, homes that are better in every way… better design, higher strength, higher energy performance and comfort, and increased resiliency," Ballard said at the time.
