Intel Layoffs: 'Won’t Be Easy' - Chipmaker To Cut Over 20% Of Its Workforce In Major Restructuring Effort

Intel is reportedly planning to cut more than 20% of its global workforce to reduce bureaucracy and refocus on its engineering roots, according to a report by Bloomberg News. 

The move comes as the once-dominant chipmaker struggles to keep pace with fast-rising competitors in the semiconductor industry.

New Round of Layoffs

Quoting a source familiar with the matter, Bloomberg stated that Intel’s goal is to streamline management and revive its innovation-led culture. 

This new round of layoffs follows a previous cut of about 15,000 jobs in 2024. At the end of last year, Intel’s total global workforce stood at 108,900, down from 124,800 the year before.

It is currently unclear whether Intel’s 4,900 employees in Ireland, based at the company’s chip manufacturing plant in Leixlip, Co Kildare, will be impacted by the layoffs. The Leixlip site is home to a major new investment—Fab 34, a chipmaking facility estimated to cost around $20 billion (€17.57 billion). 

Also Read: CES 2025: Intel Announces Core Ultra 200HX CPUs for Next-Generation Gaming Laptops

Construction of the facility is nearly complete, and high-volume production of Intel Core Ultra processors using Intel 4 technology began there in September 2023.

Q1 Earnings Results

Intel’s dramatic move to cut staff comes just ahead of its first-quarter earnings report, scheduled for release tomorrow. The company recently appointed Lip-Bu Tan, a seasoned tech executive, as its new chief executive. In a message to staff, Tan acknowledged the road ahead will be tough, stating that it “won’t be easy” to turn things around.

Once a dominant name in Silicon Valley, Intel has lost ground to rivals like Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung, both of which now lead the global market in contract chip manufacturing. Additionally, Intel has been caught off guard by Nvidia’s rapid rise in the AI chip space. 

While Intel’s strength has traditionally been in chips for standard computing, Nvidia has surged ahead as the go-to provider for chips that power artificial intelligence applications.

As the tech landscape shifts toward AI and advanced chipmaking, Intel faces mounting pressure to reinvent itself, and these deep job cuts may be just the beginning of that process.