AOL’s Northern Virginia presence continues to shrink, as the one-time internet pioneer prepares to lay off more than 100 employees in the coming months.
A total of 108 workers who work at or receive assignments from the company’s office at 11955 Democracy Drive in Reston Town Center will be laid off between now and May 31, according to notifications sent to the Virginia Department of Workforce Advancement and Development and Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay on Feb. 17.
As first reported by the Washington Business Journal, the permanent layoffs will be implemented in two phases, with approximately 94 workers being let go on March 1 and another 14 on May 31.
“All affected employees have been notified of their separation dates and that their separation from employment will be permanent,” the notices said, adding that more “employment losses” might occur in the future.
The layoffs at AOL follow the completion of its sale from Yahoo to the Italian technology company Bending Spoons. Announced in October, the deal was finalized on Jan. 2, a Bending Spoons spokesperson told FFXnow.
Based in Milan, Italy, Bending Spoons focuses on buying up existing digital businesses, with AOL, the video platform Vimeo and Eventbrite among its highest-profile targets so far.
The Bending Spoons spokesperson confirmed that layoffs at AOL were announced on Feb. 17, but declined to share additional details “to respect the privacy of those departing.”
“This decision wasn’t taken lightly, and follows a thorough review of the organization to determine how AOL can best operate as part of Bending Spoons,” the spokesperson said.
While Bending Spoons didn’t address how many employees will remain at AOL’s Reston office after the layoffs, the spokesperson said the company has “ambitious plans” to set the company up for future growth:
In our experience operating digital businesses such as Evernote, Meetup, and WeTransfer, reducing organizational complexity leads to faster and more efficient product development. We’re confident that this leaner organization will set AOL up to meet the needs of its loyal customer base with greater focus and agility.
Those impacted by the layoff have been offered a separation package exceeding industry standards, designed to provide substantial support during the transition. To respect the privacy of those departing, we cannot provide additional details at this time.
Going forward, we remain committed to growing AOL by leveraging the expertise of the team and the resources of the broader Bending Spoons platform. We have ambitious plans to strengthen AOL’s reliability, enhance the user experience, and continue improving the offering to better serve our customers.
Though its signature dial-up service was discontinued last September, AOL still operates as a web browser and email provider with around 8 million daily users, Bending Spoons said when announcing its acquisition.
The company originally known as America Online expanded rapidly in the 1990s, its workforce growing from about 450 people at its headquarters on Westwood Center Drive in Tysons in 1994 to approximately 3,500 people across the country just two years later, according to archived Washington Post reports.
With 1,100 Northern Virginia-based employees spread across three office buildings in Tysons and one in Reston, the company announced in 1996 that it would relocate the Tysons headquarters to a new campus in Ashburn, setting the stage for Loudoun County to become the world’s data center capital.
At its peak in 2004, the Ashburn campus hosted 5,300 workers, Inside NoVA reported in 2023, as the vacated buildings were being demolished.
The emergence of broadband as the dominant technology for accessing the internet, along with a calamitous merger with Time Warner, hastened AOL’s slide from relevancy.
Upon moving their headquarters to New York City in 2007, company leaders said they were committed to maintaining a presence in Loudoun, but AOL steadily sold off pieces of the Dulles Technology Center property in subsequent years.
The final 43-acre piece was acquired in 2022 by Tysons-based developer American Real Estate Partners and investor Harrison Street, which are turning the site into more data centers.
AOL sold its Reston property at 12100 Sunrise Valley Drive for $45 million in 2007 to CRG West, a data center developer previously affiliated with the private equity firm The Carlyle Group before morphing into CoreSite Realty, according to a 2010 report to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
CoreSite opened its first data center on the former AOL site in 2008 and received Fairfax County’s approval a decade later for an expansion to the former Sunrise Technology Park offices on the south side of Sunrise Valley Drive. A site plan for the next phase of the expansion, which will deliver 943,600 square feet of data center space at full buildout, is under county review.
Virginia’s workforce department also received notice last week that JCPenney will lay off 74 workers in May when it closes its longstanding store at Springfield Town Center.
Screenshot via Google Maps
