Tech giant stuns Wall Street with 25,000 layoffs as jobs crisis deepens
Silicon Valley titan Intel will slash 25,000 jobs this year as it battles to turn around its flagging fortunes.
The chipmaking giant — which makes processors that power millions of Dell, HP, and Lenovo computers — will shrink its workforce from about 99,500 to 75,000 by the end of 2025.
Bosses said the layoffs come alongside plans to abandon factory projects in Germany and Poland, slow the pace of construction on major facilities in Ohio, and consolidate operations in Costa Rica into bigger hubs in Vietnam and Malaysia.
The company first warned of cuts in April as it grapples with mounting competition and slowing demand.
Thursday's confirmation on the the scale of the layoffs came as Intel updated Wall Street on its earnings over the past three months. It posted a loss of $2.9 billion.
Bosses said Intel has slashed 15,000 jobs so far this year — suggesting another 10,000 are set to go.
News of the huge loss and scale of the job cuts sent Intels stock plunging. By Friday lunchtime it was down nine per cent.
This marks the second major round of job cuts at Intel in the past two years. In December, the company ousted its CEO while cutting 15 percent of its workforce in 2024.
Lip-Bu Tan, Intel's CEO, has led the company's share price to rebound in 2025 after a terrible 2024 stock performance
'There are no more blank checks,' new CEO Lip-Bu Tan wrote in a memo to employees. Intel's stock is down 33 per cent in the past year.
Intel, once one of Silicon Valley's most profitable companies, rose to prominence in the 1990s on the strength of its microprocessor chips — the 'brains' of personal computers.
But it missed the smartphone boom and has struggled to cash in on the surging demand for AI chips.
Chipmakers like AMD, IBM, TSMC, and especially Nvidia have surged ahead by investing aggressively in processors built specifically for artificial intelligence workloads.
Nvidia — whose chips now power nearly 80 percent of AI platforms — recently became the first company to ever reach a valuation over $4 trillion.
Some of America's biggest companies have announced sweeping job cuts this year.
In May, Walmart — America's largest employer — announced it was cutting 1,500 jobs from its tech operations and e-commerce teams.
Procter & Gamble, the owner of Tide detergent and Gillette shaving products, is also undergoing significant cuts. The company said it would eliminate 7,000 positions.
Intel employs thousands at its HQ in Oregon
Intel partnered with dozens of computer manufacturers to make core processing chips
Intel, once a dominant player in the computer chip market, has seen an increase in high-tech competitors
Job losses have been even more pronounced in the tech sector, as firms increasingly replace human employees with hyper-intelligent machines.
The AI-driven job bloodbath marks a major shift for American workers. For years, mass layoffs were concentrated in US manufacturing plants.
Now, they're impacting college-educated, high-to-middle-class earners.
Microsoft — one of the leading firms investing in AI — is expected to lay off thousands of employees next month as it shifts resources toward deeper investments.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy recently said the quiet part out loud: the technology will uproot thousands of Americans from their jobs.
'As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done,' he wrote to his employees in a memo.
