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- Another project leader leaves Google X.
- Emily Kolawole oversaw a confidential moonshot project.
- Several Google X projects have either shut down or spun out of parent Alphabet.
Google X recently lost another team leader.
Emi Kolawole, a project leader at the Alphabet moonshot division since 2021, left the company in January, according to her LinkedIn.
She led a "confidential early-stage exploration to find a breakthrough technology business for Alphabet," according to that LinkedIn profile.
Kolawole oversaw project operations and kept its budget "lean by leveraging strong relationships across X and Alphabet," she wrote on LinkedIn. She also ran a guest speaker series at X called Troublemaker Talks.
Before this project, Kolawole ran internal communications for X from 2017.
Google X was started to make tech breakthroughs and work on big problems, from transportation efficiency to the climate crisis. Last year, insiders told BI the lab was hitting the reset button and rethinking its purpose.
Some of X's most ambitious projects have been scaled back or spun out of Alphabet, in favor of bets with more immediate revenue-generating potential.
Kolawole's departure came just before a second smaller wave of layoffs at Google. Some people within the Other Bets division of Alphabet have also been encouraged to seek outside funding for their projects.
Kolawole declined to comment. Google didn't respond to a request for comment.
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