singaporebased tech giant grab will lay off over 1000 employees its ceo said tuesday a move that will affect about 11 percent of its workforce grab launched in 2012 as a taxibooking app in malaysia before becoming southeast asias biggest ridehailing firm and expanding into financial services like digital payments the company has been narrowing its losses and aims to break even by the end of this year i want to be clear that we are not doing this as a shortcut to profitability ceo anthony tan wrote in a message to employees tuesday he called the restructuring a painful but necessary step change has never been this fast technology such as generative ai is evolving at breakneck speed the cost of capital has gone up directly impacting the competitive landscape the letter said according to an excerpt posted on grab’s website the primary goal of this exercise is to strategically reorganise ourselves so that we can move faster work smarter and rebalance our resources across our portfolio in line with our longer term strategies the company is on track to break even this year even without the layoffs tan said grab laid off 360 employees in 2020 – then about five percent of its fulltime workforce – as the pandemic hit demand for its services in 2018 grab cemented its position as southeast asias biggest ridehailing firm when it bought ubers operations in the region ending a bruising battle with its usbased rival the company went public on wall street in 2021 by merging with a specialpurpose acquisition company or spac the transaction was the largestever us public market debut by a southeast asian company grab said at the time and valued the company at 396 billion but its shares have plummeted since debuting at 13 they were selling at around 340 on tuesday southeast asian technology firms have been slashing their workforce as they focus on profitability including singaporebased sea ltd which cut more than 7000 jobs last year froze salaries and slashed spending grabs indonesian rival goto laid off 600 workers this year in addition to 1300 jobs last year