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Amazon is making more cost-cutting moves.
The retail and media giant has decided to shut down its Halo fitness wearable. Halo debuted in 2020 as Amazon’s foray into the wearable fitness and healthcare space.
Halo aimed to compete in the wearable health and sleep-tracking space that also includes devices from Google’s Fitbit, the Apple Watch, Oura Ring, and WHOOP.
Some employees are being laid off as part of the Halo shutdown, which follows Amazon’s recent start of layoffs to 9,000 employees. About 18,000 jobs were cut beginning in November as part of the largest layoffs in Amazon’s 29-year history.
Consumers who bought Halo devices and accessories in the past 12 months will be given full refunds by Amazon, and Halo app subscribers no longer need to pay monthly fees.
WHOOP, which was previously valued at $3.6 billion and had its own layoffs last year, claims Amazon’s Halo device copied its design.
“Amazon imitated our industrial design WHOOP and yes they met with us as potential investors years ago under the [Alexa Funda],” WHOOP CEO Will Ahmed tweeted in 2020.
On Wednesday, Ahmed tweeted that Amazon Halo’s hardware design “was a complete ripoff” of WHOOP.
