TikTok to close Nashville office, lay off 250 employees

TikTok said Wednesday it volition adjacent its Nashville bureau successful October, laying disconnected 250 workers.

The determination is simply a retrenchment from the societal video company’s enlargement into Nashville successful 2024 and comes arsenic galore tech companies are reevaluating their workforce amid the maturation of artificial intelligence.

“We person decided to adjacent our Nashville bureau to streamline our operations and amended align our teams for semipermanent growth,” said TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, which oversees TikTok’s U.S. operations. “We stay afloat committed to providing secure, harmless and affirmative experiences for the 200 cardinal Americans that create, observe and link with what they emotion connected TikTok.”

The determination was circumstantial to the Nashville bureau to bring its teams person together, according to a TikTok USDS Joint Venture spokesperson.

TikTok‘s U.S. relation notified the State of Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development astir the fig of layoffs and the bureau closure connected Wednesday. The WARN announcement did not item what roles were astatine the office, but immoderate jobs were related to contented moderation, according to Nashville Metro Councilmember Terry Vo.

“I’m disappointed for each the Nashvillians who are waking up to this reality,” Vo said.

TikTok did not respond to questions connected what types of roles were astatine the Nashville bureau oregon whether artificial quality was a origin for the layoffs.

TikTok successful 2024 signed a 143,610 quadrate ft lease astatine the Moore Building successful the Music Row area, having spent respective cardinal dollars to physique retired the space, according to the Tennessean. The lease besides astir tripled its bureau abstraction successful Nashville, the Tennessean reported.

The societal media institution has its U.S. office successful Culver City.

In 2024, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) expressed disapproval of the TikTok bureau opening successful Nashville due to the fact that astatine that time, TikTok’s genitor institution was Chinese tech elephantine ByteDance.

“When TikTok’s CEO was successful Washington, I made it wide to him that Tennesseans are highly acrophobic astir China’s influence,” Blackburn said successful a connection successful 2024, adding determination were concerns astir however the institution would grip U.S. idiosyncratic information and whether it would propulsion for the Chinese government’s interests.

Since then, the U.S. government, TikTok and ByteDance came to an statement past twelvemonth to found a abstracted entity called TikTok USDS Joint Venture overseeing TikTok’s operations and information extortion successful the U.S. that is bulk American owned.

A spokesperson for Blackburn did not instantly instrumentality a petition for remark connected TikTok’s bureau closure successful Nashville.

Rob Enderle, main expert astatine Oregon-based Enderle Group, said helium expects much layoffs astatine different TikTok U.S. bureau locations owed to the caller ownership.

“When a caller ownership takes implicit a company, they marque adjustments to the staffing levels,” Enderle said.