Intel is planning to cull more than 20% of the company’s workforce in an effort to “eliminate bureaucracy” and “rebuild an engineering culture,” Bloomberg reported Wednesday.
After cutting some 17,500 jobs last year, the company still had nearly 109,000 employees by the end of 2024, which meant some 22,000 workers could be at risk of losing their positions with the chipmaker.
The report came from someone familiar with the situation who asked to remain anonymous.
The move would be the first big swing from new CEO Lip-Bu Tan, the semiconductor industry veteran and former Intel board member hired in March to turn around the struggling chipmaker.
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The 65-year-old joined the company roughly three months after previous CEO Pat Gelsinger retired in December after failing to keep up with Nvidia and other companies in the AI chip race. Intel lost some $19 billion last year, according to the AP.
Intel recently delayed two new chip factories in Ohio to make sure the plants were finished in a “financially responsible manner.”
In February, the company said its first fab in New Albany wouldn’t come online until 2031 — it was originally slated to open this year. The second fab is scheduled to begin production by 2032.
Intel recently shed a majority of its Altera chip business for $8.75 billion. The company bought it in 2015 for $16.7 billion.
The company is expected to report Q1 results today and offer an official announcement on the cuts.
The entire AI chip industry is facing new threats from its Chinese counterparts. In January, a Chinese upstart called DeepSeek revealed details of a new large-language model that works like ChatGPT but uses far less computing power.
Intel didn’t immediately respond to IEN’s request for comment.
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