Mozilla Foundation lays off 30% of staff and ends advocacy work
- Mozilla Foundation will lay off approximately 30+ employees
- Blamed on ‘relentless onslaught of change’
- The Foundation remains committed to “a healthy internet”
The Mozilla Foundation, a US non-profit affiliated with the company responsible for the Firefox browser, has confirmed that it will lay off almost a third (30%) of its employees.
The decision to reduce staff comes after what the Foundation describes as a ‘relentless onslaught of change’.
It is believed that the Mozilla Foundation now employs 120 employees, meaning the layoffs will affect approximately 36 employees.
Mozilla Foundation will lay off a third of its employees
“The Mozilla Foundation is reorganizing teams to increase agility and impact as we accelerate our work to ensure a more open and equitable tech future for us all,” said Brandon Borrman, Mozilla’s VP of Communications.
“Unfortunately, that means we’ll have to close some of the work we’ve done in the past and eliminate associated roles to bring more focus going forward. We’re not sharing a specific number, but it represents about 30% of current team.”
This isn’t the first time Mozilla has laid off employees — Mozilla Corporation, not to be confused with the Foundation, laid off about 60 employees in February 2024 — the equivalent of about 5% of its workforce.
The Corporation is the name many consumers already know, through projects like the Firefox browser, but it is the Foundation that oversees governance and sets policy. Mozilla has three other organizations: the tech-for-good investment fund Mozilla Ventures, the AI R&D lab Mozilla.ai and Thunderbird maker MZLA.
The Foundation also lobbies for “privacy, inclusivity, literacy and all the principles of a healthy internet,” including more recently, safe AI.
Nabiha Syed, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation, shared in an email with colleagues (via TechCrunch): “Navigating this chaotic, distracting time requires laser focus – and sometimes saying goodbye to the excellent work that got us this far because it won’t get us to the next peak.”
Borman added, “We also want to make clear that the restructuring has not diminished advocacy; on the contrary, advocacy is still a central tenet of the Mozilla Foundation’s work and we are in the process of rethinking our approach to it.”
