Big job cuts are coming in July.
Oregon Live reports Intel will lay off 15% to 20% of its factory workers, memo says
Intel plans to lay off up to a fifth of its factory workers, an enormous cutback that will have a profound effect on one of the chipmaker’s core businesses.
“These are difficult actions but essential to meet our affordability challenges and current financial position of the company. It drives pain to every individual,” Intel manufacturing Vice President Naga Chandrasekaran wrote to employees Saturday. He said the company is targeting job reductions between 15% and 20%, with most of the cuts taking place in July
The company had 109,000 employees at the end of 2024, but it’s not clear how many of those worked in its factory division – called Intel Foundry.
Overall, though, the layoffs will surely eliminate several thousand jobs – and quite possibly more than 10,000.
Next month’s layoffs will take place at Intel factories around the world but could have an especially big effect in Oregon, the heart of the company’s manufacturing operation. The chipmaker employs 20,000 in the state, more than any other business.
Intel eliminated 15,000 jobs across the company in 2024, including 3,000 in Oregon. The company is responding to a protracted decline in sales and a bleak near-term outlook, driven by intense competition in PCs and data centers and Intel’s failure to develop advanced chips for the booming market for artificial intelligence.
Last year’s cuts came through layoffs, buyouts, early retirement offers and attrition. This time out, Intel has indicated it doesn’t plan to offer any voluntary buyouts. Instead, it will choose which workers it doesn’t want based on investment priorities and individual performance.
Last year, the Biden administration awarded Intel $7.9 billion in federal subsidies to support new or expanded factories in Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico and Ohio. Intel received $1 billion of that money from the federal CHIPS Act last year but much of the rest appears to be in limbo while the Trump administration re-evaluates the awards.
Intel has delayed the opening of its first Ohio factory until 2030, a tacit acknowledgement there isn’t enough demand for its chips to justify the $10 billion investment to equip the facility.
There were 15,000 jobs cuts last year, mostly through attrition. This year it may be over 10,000 pink slips, none through attrition.
Does anyone remember when Intel was considered one of the biggest of the big gorillas?
We talked about “Wintel”, the 4 internet horsemen, and the gorilla game among other things. Amazon eventually lived up to its title of “Godzilla” after crashing over 90 percent.
INTC is now back at a 2012 price.
What will happen to their diversity hiring goals? I remember they made a program to offer scholarships to encourage non-Whites and womyn to enter STEM fields.
The new Intel fabs were built assuming that Intel would become a leader in AI chips.
Unfortunately they did not come up with the needed competitive or market leading designs or advanced chip manufacturing technology.
Watch for a massive leadership change or a sale to another manufacturer that can utilize these immense facilities.
The scale is impressive if you have seen these buildings!
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Only the Chinese people are able to lead technology companies. They are built different.
They’re good at manufacturing and quality control in producing technologies that have been invented elsewhere.The have a high patent count but most expire unused.
Re: AZ fabs – when Capital is a give-away (free to me), I don’t care about return.
Some minor executive opportunity cost (time) in managing the capital projects and negotiation — basically Intel didn’t need a plan.
Govt handouts are interesting contracts. If the USG doesn’t complete the funding, often the corporation is relieved of all obligations (such as finishing and operating the foundry; any hiring requirements, etc).
It’d be interesting if the 80% finished foundry became a “for sale” property … someone will do well finishing and operating it without all the govt
red/blue-tape (living wages, on-site childcare, DEI commissars, etc)The problem is the FAB that is not finished in AZ is attached to all of the other fabs, I don’t know how you would spin that off. I would imagine that if TSMC and Broadcom purchase Intel as has been floated, they will finish the fabs and bring in equipment to manufacture AI chips.
– Last year, the Biden administration awarded Intel $7.9 billion in federal subsidies to support new or expanded factories in Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico and Ohio.
> I know they only received 6,9B so far, and that will probably be it. Looks like the gravy train was turned off, and now comes reality. They were not in a financial position to be expanding obviously, but with free money, they did so anyway. Did they plan on going deep into debt, with the hope the expansion would pull them out of it?
And that does not include the 3 billion of gov money for the Secure Enclave program.
https://newsroom.intel.com/corporate/2024-intel-news
A year ago I checked Intel’s Board composition. Hardly anyone had any knowledge of chip design and production. No wonder that Intel is a sinking ship. Few years ago I did the same for Boeing. How many guys there had any knowledge of industries they were supplying? One guy, CEO, because he worked in GE engine unit before. The rest – bean counters and another useless CVs.
Yes, a good/quick method to screen losers or short-positions.
Took a shot prompting Grok but was told “information difficult to find”.
intel was liquidated by the Finance Bros. The carcass remains for picking.
From 2014 or so on, it was all about DEI and diversity. That was the proverbial nail in the coffin. Culture turned toxic even before that.
Boards of big companies don’t actually do anything. they’re all politics/networking.
They didn’t read “The Soul of a New Machine” to see how it’s done.
“Intel plans to lay off up to a fifth of its factory workers”
But those shoe and T-shirt factories will come back right? That’s what those tariffs are all about, bringing back manufacturing…..
Don’t worry, I have it on good authority we’re gonna get 90 deals in 90 days and all will be great again.
Intel’s rival, AMD is doing fine, after breaking from the Intel compatibility trap.
BTW, both Nvidia and AMD’s CEO are from Taiwan, so maybe that’s the secret sauce.
Not from Taiwan, Chinese. That’s the “secret sauce”. Another indication of the collapse of the US & it’s parasitic capitalism that sees everything in terms of profit I.E Education & training.
I simple web search would reveal they were both born in Taiwan.
Maximus ain’t so smart. Taiwanese people are Chinese…… Looks like you are caught in the propaganda. You should refrain from using search engines cuz they’ll find whatever you ask for, get educated.
You presume, I don’t know that Taiwanese are Chinese?
Jeez. You want to teach me geography or ethnography?
Taiwan is pretty capitalistic.
Once robots are making everything. Labor costs will be much better.
With the US getting bogged down in the middle east, this is a prime time for China to move against Taiwan. If that happens, oh boy!
Is the US getting bogged down in the middle east?
Yes, if you can think beyond 5 minutes. The blowback from Iran will be another 9/11 at some point. Not today, not tomorrow but somewhere down the line and of course, the US will need to retaliate.
I hope someone is there to help with your hyperventilating.
The alternative is a Nagasaki.
“AI.”
“APE IN” and APE OUT. DO NOT BE FOOLED.
This is all propaganda.
APE IN is only QUICKER to spit out shit results.
I know several graphic designers that have lost their jobs to AI. AI is great at image generation. I use it myself to create my own digital art. I’ve been playing with music creation AI and it’s pretty good and will only get better.
It’s so good this key music lawyer is suing AI music makers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlKBpyjZU4I
AI is wonderful for creative stuff … just have minimal expectations on accuracy; and lower expectations on precision.
Short Story: Intel, my least favorite supplier (I ran a Motherboard Manufacturing Co. using Intel only). We could not get enough Intel CPU’s to supply our biggest Customer at the time.
Intel was selling to Compaq and Compaq (and many others) were “Gray Marketing” CPU’s to us – – and marking them up. We had called Intel, complaining and they arrogantly stopped calling back. I got on the Phone with them and they treated me like a peon.
I finally Convinced them to come out and meet with us. Demand for their chips, TO US, was amounting to 8,000 pieces a week (Pentium II).
In a meeting with their arrogant Silicon valley Management team (They looked DOWN UPON US arriving as if it were such an effort to drive the ten miles to meet the entire Team.
Earlier, I had taken a Box (unopened) and covered it with a Shower Towel…and it was placed in the middle of the Boardroom table.
Then, I came into OUR boardroom, and it was a GREAT MOMENT FOR ME: UN-COVERING that SEALED COMPAQ CPU BOX, which they had not even taken the time to re-package, and it had the original INTEL SHIPPING LABEL.
Now, the Intel VP, and I had waited for it, had said: “NO ON GREY MARKETS our CPU’s – – NO ONE!”
”WE DO NOT ALLOW GRAY MARKETING!”
I hated that Company, taking advantage of we smaller start-ups…It would not have surprised me if they had COORDINATED THE SALES. INTEL WERE SCUM and likely STILL ARE!
IT WAS GALLING.
I sold my stock in just a few years, left the Valley for Good and we are SLOW travelers now, skipping around the world with my Motherboards earnings….I worked 80 hour weeks to get the F OUT!
I remember those cpu chips being worth more than gold at one point ounce for ounce. A CPU was about $400 and an ounce of gold was under $300. I also remember a heist of a truck full of those chips getting hijacked and someone scoring a ton of money.
Interestingly, a 5090 (latest) NVDIA graphics card sells for $2000 today and gold is nearly double. Goes to show the efficiency of manufacturing chips and components.
Only the paranoid survive and after Andy Grove, Intel wasn’t paranoid enough.
Intel are suffering because the economies are collapsing. They produce chips for most computers sold, when economies collapse the last thing the masses do is buy or upgrade computers, this has zero to do with Nvidia & their scam chips which fail all the time. I think the sheeple miss the point & warning here, this is a good indicator the economies are collapsing & demand for the most common chips is collapsing. The highest end chips are a niche market, very small & not a consumer good really. This isn’t about Nvidia, it’s about collapsing economies & a collapsing computer sales. Nvidia will follow & collapse also in due course.
Intel’s memory chip business collapsed in the late 1970s so they moved to making more processors which turned out to be much more profitable and durable. When one market falls you have to have other products in the pipeline. Did you read Andy Grove’s book?
ANDY WAS A PRICK!
Pricks win. Nice guys don’t. All the great business leaders were and are pricks. it goes with the jobs.
Top Intel executives didn’t have to develop AI chips to compete.
They just bought Nvidia stock and laughed all the way to the bank.
Sad.
They engaged in massive stock buybacks to push up the stock price to satisfy Wall Street and pad their own stock options.
If they had instead used that money wisely (investing in AI chips) they wouldn’t be in this position of needing handouts (7.9 billion in subsidies). What should happen is the subsidies should be removed and Intel should raise cash via stock offerings (which is what Capitalism is all about) to make investments for their future. Or they should die a slow death like countless other companies that failed to innovate or got left behind (buggy whip makers).
Stock buybacks are one of those things we shouldn’t have allowed but now are hard to do without. I think they should be banned as they were up to the 1980’s but now in some ways we can’t do without them when it comes to awarding stock options. It’s either buy back stock to pay for the stock options of have you stock continually diluted by stock option rewards.
No such thing as AI chips, they are just the current fastest in processing data, no such thing as AI either, it’s all in the name. Artificial means not real, not real intelligence. All AI is, is speed of processing & probabilities set by human beings. It’s not different to any other computing power, it’s only as good as it’s human programmers & it’s speed in processing. That is why China with inferior chips has better systems, they have slower chips but better human programmers. AI is exactly like 2000 internet craze.
Jack, people misunderstand AI. “GIGO.”
Garbage in and garbage out. Human reasoning is still garbage, as we can read here all of the time (comments) because humans are still ape like. APE REASONING can only go so far.
Engineers are worse. I employed hundreds over my years in the Silicon Valley. THEIR REASONING powers and skills were right there at ape like. Their VP’s were worse.
We had a hard time finding elite thinkers to program our Firmware in our Motherboards and other high tech equipment.
Yes meritocracy is dead if it ever was alive, the shit rises to the top.
THEY WERE THE BEST in the 1980’s. ALL DOWN-HILL from there. But, they likely REMAINED being pricks and arrogant as hell! I hate that Company with a passion.
I CLAP when I hear that they are struggling.
Check your grammar. Amazon did not crash 90%…
Check your understanding between “Grammar” & facts, yes Amazon did crash 90% in 1999 to 2002. It’ll happen again soon but worse. So not only do you not know the difference between grammar & facts, you don’t know the facts either. I think you’ve come to the wrong website & you’re more suited to Truth Social (Should be called BS Antisocial).
Intel has been shitting the bucket for years now. Great company destroyed by financial engineering and loss of mission.
Seems to be endemic in the US.
Intel outside.
Are we winning yet?
The Biggest Companies Across America Are Cutting Their Workforces
https://archive.is/6qIf0#selection-2113.0-2113.65