Google's Nest Team Swoops in to Hire Nike Fuelband Employees

Nike recently confirmed its ditching the FuelBand hardware business to instead put all of its focus on software development. Part of that decision involved laying off about 55 employees from the Nike FuelBand department. Those men and women may not be without jobs for very long, because they’ve caught the attention of the Nest team inside of Google.

According to an invitation obtained by TechCrunch, members of the Nest team inside Google, who are working to build all new products not just smart thermostats, flew up to Oregon to try to recruit some of the folks who worked on Nike’s FuelBand team. We know they’re bright people — Apple scooped up one of the FuelBand leads last summer, possibly to work on the iWatch — and Google could use them for any number of reasons.

Most likely, they could help work on any wearable projects, since that’s where they have expertise. Google Glass seems plausible, but maybe Google wants them for something related to Android Wear — like its own smartwatch instead of one made by LG or Motorola. Or, perhaps Google is brewing up something else entirely. Either way, the Nest folks probably didn’t just fly to Oregon for kicks.

Here’s a look at the invite passed along to Tech Crunch: