COMP NEWS – An AI company named Jasper AI recently raised over $125 million in funds. But less than a year later, the company is laying off a large portion of its staff.

Jasper AI has let go of an unknown number of employees less than a year after raising $125 million at a $1.5 billion valuation. CEO Dave Rogenmoser hinted that the announced staff cuts are a prelude to a refocusing on servicing the marketing industry, as the recent Jasper Campaigns launch suggests.

Jasper Campaigns was the latest effort by Jasper to reorient itself around marketing this year. The company jumped into developing enterprise services with the Jasper Chat conversational generative AI engine after OpenAI remade the industry’s landscape by launching ChatGPT. The $125 million raised last October gave Jasper some runway, and the startup claimed to have more than 120,000 business users. The company’s Jasper for Business suite of tools led to Jasper Campaigns and targeting marketing. But, the shift couldn’t prevent Jasper from finding it necessary to reduce its numbers.

“We’ve come to realize, however, that for us to have the fuel and focus we need to fully go after that opportunity, we need to reshape our own team. And so today, with a heavy heart, I told the team at Jasper that we will be discontinuing a number of roles so that we may sharpen our focus and align resources to become the best possible AI copilot for marketing teams,” Rogenmoser wrote in a blog post. “This change is a difficult one, but it has a purpose. As marketing teams everywhere rapidly adopt AI, urgent, unmet needs are arising. With a tighter focus and the right resources, we can address those emerging needs and become the catalyst that helps our customers use AI to market smarter, not just faster.”

To read more about Jasper AI’s fundraising and layoffs, click here.

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