Mozilla Foundation lays off 30% of staff, ends advocacy work

by DTM | Posted on
  • Mozilla Foundation will lay off around 30+ workers
  • A “relentless onslaught of change” has been blamed
  • The Foundation remains committed to “a healthy internet”

The Mozilla Foundation, an American nonprofit linked to the company responsible for the Firefox browser, has confirmed it will be laying off nearly a third (30%) of its employees.

The decision to reduce its headcount comes after what the Foundation describes as a “relentless onslaught of change.”

The Mozilla Foundation is now believed to have up to 120 workers, meaning that the layoffs will affect around 36 employees.

Mozilla Foundation to lay off a third of its workers

“The Mozilla Foundation is reorganizing teams to increase agility and impact as we accelerate our work to ensure a more open and equitable technical future for us all,” confirmed Brandon Borrman, Mozilla’s VP of Communications.

“That unfortunately means ending some of the work we have historically pursued and eliminating associated roles to bring more focus going forward. We’re not sharing a specific number, but it represents about 30% of the current team.”

This isn’t the first time Mozilla has laid off workers – Mozilla Corporation, not to be confused with the Foundation, laid off around 60 workers in February 2024 – the equivalent of around 5% of its workforce.

The Corporation is the name that many consumers will already be familiar with, through projects like the Firefox browser, but it’s the Foundation that oversees governance and sets policies. Mozilla has three other organizations – the tech-for-good investment fund Mozilla Ventures, AI R&D lab Mozilla.ai and Thunderbird-maker MZLA.

The Foundation also lobbies for “privacy, inclusion, literacy, and all principles of a healthy internet,” including more recently safe AI.

Nabiha Syed, Mozilla Foundation’s executive director, shared in an email with colleagues (via TechCrunch): “Navigating this topsy-turvy, distracting time requires laser focus — and sometimes saying goodbye to the excellent work that has gotten us this far because it won’t get us to the next peak.”

Borman added: “We also want to clarify that the restructuring has not dropped advocacy; on the contrary, advocacy is still a central tenet of Mozilla Foundation’s work and we are in the process of revisiting our approach to it.”

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