Intel to lay off more than 5,500 employees in US in latest round of job cuts

Chipmaker Intel will fire more than 5,500 employees across various states in the United States, according to filings by the company. Earlier estimates had put the number of employees set to be axed at around 4,000.

According to Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) filings—declarations companies have to file in certain US states before mass layoffs—Intel workforce in California and Oregon will be the worst hit in the upcoming round of layoffs. The company has doubled its layoff estimates in California to 1,935 employees. In Oregon, where Intel is the biggest private employer, the company is planning to cut 2,932 jobs, four times than initially planned. In Arizona, the company is planning to fire 696 employees.

The revised layoff estimates put the overall tally north of 5,500.


Under the new chief executive Lip-Bu Tan, Intel is looking to lay off 20% of its workforce to cut costs. The drastic measure comes as the company falls behind in the CPU race, lags rivals like Nvidia and AMD by a wide margin in the artificial intelligence GPU race, and struggles to make its plans of offering foundry services to other chip design companies work.

Earlier this month, Tan told employees that Intel is no longer among the world’s top 10 semiconductor firms, according to a report By OregonLive. “20, 30 years ago, we were really the leader. Now I think the world has changed. We are not in the top 10 semiconductor companies,” Tan said during a global employee meeting.

The Intel chief said the company is falling behind on customer satisfaction and has lost ground to Nvidia in building AI chips. The company’s turnaround will be a “marathon,” he said, adding that the job cuts are part of efforts to make Intel more agile and closer in approach to companies like Nvidia, Broadcom, and AMD.

Tan also said Intel may be too late to compete in the enterprise AI chip market, which Nvidia dominates. “On training, I think it is too late for us,” he said, pointing to Nvidia’s strong lead and large orders from companies like Meta, OpenAI, and xAI.

Intel’s market capitalisation has dropped to about $103 billion, less than half of what it was 18 months ago. That puts it behind at least 15 other chipmakers. Nvidia, in comparison, achieved a market valuation of $4 trillion last week, driven by rising AI optimism.

Meanwhile, Intel’s upcoming chipmaking technology, Intel 18A, may also face a slow uptake. According to Reuters, Tan has expressed concerns that customers may not adopt the new manufacturing node, despite it being built to compete with TSMC’s offerings.