
Intel to Lay Off 529 Oregon Employees Amid Major Global Restructuring
This latest move comes under the direction of Intel's new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, who has launched an aggressive cost-cutting strategy intended to streamline the organization and improve operational efficiency. While the company remains profitable in several business areas, Intel recently posted a $1.6 billion loss, prompting this decisive shift.
Intel previously issued a layoff notice in California, affecting 107 employees at its Santa Clara headquarters. A source familiar with the company's plans told Bloomberg that up to 20% of Intel's global workforce may eventually be impacted by the ongoing restructuring.
In a formal statement, Intel said the Oregon layoffs are part of broader efforts to become 'a leaner, faster and more efficient company.' The statement further added, 'Removing organisational complexity and empowering our engineers will enable us to better serve the needs of our customers and strengthen our execution.'
The cuts are not limited to junior roles—key positions in engineering such as physical design, chip development, and cloud software, as well as leadership roles including a Vice President of IT, are among those being eliminated.
Intel is also winding down its automotive chip unit in Munich, Germany, which had focused on software-defined vehicle platforms. That division, led by veteran executive Jack Weast, is expected to see most of its staff laid off.
Affected employees are being given a choice between a 60-day notice period or a shorter four-week notice, both including nine weeks of pay and benefits.
One of the divisions most impacted appears to be Intel's internal foundry, responsible for chip manufacturing. According to a memo shared with The Oregonian, up to 20% of manufacturing staff could lose their jobs.
Tan emphasized a cultural shift at Intel, moving away from equating leadership with the size of one's team. Instead, the company will prioritize smaller, high-performance units focusing on mission-critical tasks. Additionally, Intel plans to outsource some of its marketing work to Accenture, which could integrate AI-driven customer engagement tools.
These developments follow a challenging 2024 for Intel, during which 15,000 jobs were already cut. If further reductions proceed as expected, this could represent one of the most significant transformations of Intel's workforce in recent history.
The company's moves are part of a larger trend in the tech industry, which has seen over 62,000 job losses in 2025 alone. Other major players like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta have also implemented sizable cuts in recent months.

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Mint
28 minutes ago
- Mint
EM Hedge Funds Eye Safeguards as World-Beating Rally Blooms
(Bloomberg) -- Hedge funds dedicated to emerging-market debt are increasingly turning to risk-mitigating strategies to ensure they lock in double digit gains as a broad rally in developing nation assets deepens. After a banner first half of the year, hedge funds targeting EM debt have returned nearly 13% on an annual basis — more than their peers positioned in any other asset class, according to data based on Bloomberg indexes. The latest global financial flows data shows the asset class remains thriving and the extra yield investors demand to hold the sovereign debt of developing nations over US Treasuries just hit a 15-year low. Such tight pricing, along with uncertainty over US policies and global conflicts, is pushing hedge funds to curb risks as they ride the historic rally. The funds do this by swapping longer-maturity bonds in their portfolios for less risky shorter-dated ones. They also focus on higher-rated debt and the most-liquid securities while keeping an ample cash pile. 'Do you just want to be massively long on credit on these valuations? I'd say probably not,' said Anthony Kettle, who co-manages BlueBay Emerging Market Unconstrained Bond Fund with Polina Kurdyavko and Brent David. 'Having a little bit of dry powder evidently makes sense, and also running elevated cash levels.' To be clear, Kettle said, there's still a 'decent environment' to gain additional returns as funds become more selective and can profit from both rising and falling asset prices, unlike index-based investors. The $784-million BlueBay fund has returned 17% over the past 12 months. Investors have taken advantage of EM inflows stoked by increased interest for alternative assets amid US policy unpredictability, which has also weakened the dollar. While many developing countries have come out of distressed debt levels as sentiment improved, further risks include another Iran-Israel flare up and potential additional increases in US tariffs, including on the buyers of Russian energy. President Donald Trump's administration has caused a 'breakdown of the traditional safe haven correlations' by shaking up the post-Cold War world order, creating an 'unusual and unpredictable' environment, said Demetris Efstathiou, the chief investment officer of Blue Diagonal EM Fixed Income Fund. 'It is very hard to predict what they will do next with tariffs, and on top of that you have ongoing wars,' Efstathiou said. His fund is 'very conservatively' positioned with shorter-maturity bonds and he avoids weak credits to protect the portfolio in the event of a global slowdown and market downturn. He has increased holdings of AAA- and AA-rated EM sovereigns along with less-indebted countries with large domestic markets like Brazil, Turkey and Mexico. EM-dedicated bond funds have received $31 billion in inflows year-to-date, with positioning increased in each of the last 14 weeks as global markets recalibrate after an era of US dominance. A near-record $5.7 billion piled into the asset class in the week though July 23, according to EPFR Global data provided by economists at Bank of America Corp. For some, flows of such a magnitude signal that EM debt is already predicting the best-case scenario. The US and European Union agreed on a deal that will see the EU face 15% tariffs on most of its exports, including automobiles, to stave off a trade war. Following the deal announced on Sunday, EM debt mostly strengthened with local yields in emerging European nations such as Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary declining. 'The market is now priced for a Goldilocks scenario with the risk of a severe recession receding significantly and expectations' of one or more rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, the $847 million Enko Africa Debt Fund said in a letter to clients. Managed by Alain Nkontchou, the Africa-specific hedge fund has returned 24% over the past year. Nevertheless, the expected volatility means that traditional buy-to-hold trades may not necessarily succeed and that hedge funds will prioritize holding more liquid assets to ensure an easier exit in case sentiment turns, according to ProMeritum Investment Management LLP, a $700-million fund that invests in developing markets outside China. 'Liquidity management will be critical in the second half of the year because of an unpredictable environment and geopolitical risks,' said Evgueni Konovalenko, managing partner and head of strategy at the firm. Such a focus is needed 'to take advantage of both short and long positions with sudden policy changes and a daily barrage of headlines.' --With assistance from Jorgelina do Rosario. (Updates with EU-US trade deal in the 13th paragraph.) More stories like this are available on


Hindustan Times
28 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
The High-Schoolers Who Just Beat the World's Smartest AI Models
The smartest AI models ever made just went to the most prestigious competition for young mathematicians and managed to achieve the kind of breakthrough that once seemed miraculous. They still got beat by the world's brightest teenagers. Every year, a few hundred elite high-school students from all over the planet gather at the International Mathematical Olympiad. This year, those brilliant minds were joined by Google DeepMind and other companies in the business of artificial intelligence. They had all come for one of the ultimate tests of reasoning, logic and creativity. The famously grueling IMO exam is held over two days and gives students three increasingly difficult problems a day and more than four hours to solve them. The questions span algebra, geometry, number theory and combinatorics—and you can forget about answering them if you're not a math whiz. You'll give your brain a workout just trying to understand them. Because those problems are both complex and unconventional, the annual math test has become a useful benchmark for measuring AI progress from one year to the next. In this age of rapid development, the leading research labs dreamed of a day their systems would be powerful enough to meet the standard for an IMO gold medal, which became the AI equivalent of a four-minute mile. But nobody knew when they would reach that milestone or if they ever would—until now. This year's International Mathematical Olympiad attracted high-school students from all over the world. The unthinkable occurred earlier this month when an AI model from Google DeepMind earned a gold-medal score at IMO by perfectly solving five of the six problems. In another dramatic twist, OpenAI also claimed gold despite not participating in the official event. The companies described their feats as giant leaps toward the future—even if they're not quite there yet. In fact, the most remarkable part of this memorable event is that 26 students got higher scores on the IMO exam than the AI systems. Among them were four stars of the U.S. team, including Qiao (Tiger) Zhang, a two-time gold medalist from California, and Alexander Wang, who brought his third straight gold back to New Jersey. That makes him one of the most decorated young mathematicians of all time—and he's a high-school senior who can go for another gold at IMO next year. But in a year, he might be dealing with a different equation altogether. 'I think it's really likely that AI is going to be able to get a perfect score next year,' Wang said. 'That would be insane progress,' Zhang said. 'I'm 50-50 on it.' So given those odds, will this be remembered as the last IMO when humans outperformed AI? 'It might well be,' said Thang Luong, the leader of Google DeepMind's team. DeepMind vs. OpenAI Until very recently, what happened in Australia would have sounded about as likely as koalas doing calculus. But the inconceivable began to feel almost inevitable last year, when DeepMind's models built for math solved four problems and racked up 28 points for a silver medal, just one point short of gold. This year, the IMO officially invited a select group of tech companies to their own competition, giving them the same problems as the students and having coordinators grade their solutions with the same rubric. They were eager for the challenge. AI models are trained on unfathomable amounts of information—so if anything has been done before, the chances are they can figure out how to do it again. But they can struggle with problems they have never seen before. As it happens, the IMO process is specifically designed to come up with those original and unconventional problems. In addition to being novel, the problems also have to be interesting and beautiful, said IMO president Gregor Dolinar. If a problem under consideration is similar to 'any other problem published anywhere in the world,' he said, it gets tossed. By the time students take the exam, the list of a few hundred suggested problems has been whittled down to six. Meanwhile, the DeepMind team kept improving the AI system it would bring to IMO, an unreleased version of Google's advanced reasoning model Gemini Deep Think, and it was still making tweaks in the days leading up to the competition. The effort was led by Thang Luong, a senior staff research scientist who narrowly missed getting to IMO in high school with Vietnam's team. He finally made it to IMO last year—with Google. Before he returned this year, DeepMind executives asked about the possibility of gold. He told them to expect bronze or silver again. He adjusted his expectations when DeepMind's model nailed all three problems on the first day. The simplicity, elegance and sheer readability of those solutions astonished mathematicians. The next day, as soon as Luong and his colleagues realized their AI creation had crushed two more proofs, they also realized that would be enough for gold. They celebrated their monumental accomplishment by doing one thing the other medalists couldn't: They cracked open a bottle of whiskey. Key members of Google DeepMind's gold-medal-winning team, including Thang Luong, second from left. To keep the focus on students, the companies at IMO agreed not to release their results until later this month. But as soon as the Olympiad's closing ceremony ended, one company declared that its AI model had struck gold—and it wasn't DeepMind. It was OpenAI. The company wasn't a part of the IMO event, but OpenAI gave its latest experimental reasoning model all six problems and enlisted former medalists to grade the proofs. Like DeepMind's, OpenAI's system flawlessly solved five and scored 35 out of 42 points to meet the gold standard. After the OpenAI victory lap on social media, the embargo was lifted and DeepMind told the world about its own triumph—and that its performance was certified by the IMO. Not long ago, it was hard to imagine AI rivals dueling for glory like this. In 2021, a Ph.D. student named Alexander Wei was part of a study that asked him to predict the state of AI math by July 2025—that is, right now. When he looked at the other forecasts, he thought they were much too optimistic. As it turned out, they weren't nearly optimistic enough. Now he's living proof of just how wrong he was: Wei is the research scientist who led the IMO project for OpenAI. The only thing more impressive than what the AI systems did was how they did it. Google called its result a major advance, though not because DeepMind won gold instead of silver. Last year, the model needed the problems to be translated into a computer programming language for math proofs. This year, it operated entirely in 'natural language' without any human intervention. DeepMind also crushed the exam within the IMO time limit of 4 ½ hours after taking several days of computation just a year ago. You might find all of this completely terrifying—and think of AI as competition. The humans behind the models see them as complementary. 'This could perhaps be a new calculator,' Luong said, 'that powers the next generation of mathematicians.' The problem of Problem 6 Speaking of that next generation, the IMO gold medalists have already been overshadowed by AI. So let's put them back in the spotlight. Team USA at the International Mathematical Olympiad, including Alexander Wang, fourth from right, and Tiger Zhang, with the stuffed red panda on his head. Qiao Zhang is a 17-year-old student in Los Angeles on his way to MIT to study math and computer science. As a young boy, his family moved to the U.S. from China and his parents gave him a choice of two American names. He picked Tiger over Elephant. His career in competitive math began in second grade, when he entered a contest called the Math Kangaroo. It ended this month at the math Olympics next to a hotel in Australia with actual kangaroos. When he sat down at his desk with a pen and lots of scratch paper, Zhang spent the longest amount of time during the exam on Problem 6. It was a problem in the notoriously tricky field of combinatorics, the branch of mathematics that deals with counting, arranging and combining discrete objects, and it was easily the hardest on this year's test. The solution required the ingenuity, creativity and intuition that humans can muster but machines cannot—at least not yet. 'I would actually be a bit scared if the AI models could do stuff on Problem 6,' he said. Problem 6 did stump DeepMind and OpenAI's models, but it wasn't just problematic for AI. Of the 630 student contestants, 569 also received zero points. Only six received the full credit of seven points. Zhang was proud of his partial solution that earned four points—which was four more than almost everyone else. At this year's IMO, 72 contestants went home with gold. But for some, a medal wasn't their only prize. Zhang was among those who left with another keepsake: victory over the AI models. (As if it weren't enough that he can bend numbers to his will, he also has a way with words and wrote this about his IMO experience.) In the end, the six members of the U.S. team piled up five golds and one silver, finishing second overall behind the Chinese after knocking them off the top spot last year. There was once a time when such precocious math students grew up to become professors. (Or presidents—the recently elected president of Romania was a two-time IMO gold medalist with perfect scores.) While many still choose academia, others get recruited by algorithmic trading firms and hedge funds, where their quantitative brains have never been so highly valued. This year, the U.S. team was supported by Jane Street while XTX Markets sponsored the whole event. After all, they will soon be competing with each other—and with the richest tech companies—for their intellectual talents. By then, AI might be destroying mere humans at math. But not if you ask Junehyuk Jung. A former IMO gold medalist himself, Jung is now an associate professor at Brown University and visiting researcher at DeepMind who worked on its gold-medal model. He doesn't believe this was humanity's last stand, though. He thinks problems like Problem 6 will flummox AI for at least another decade. And he walked away from perhaps the most significant math contest in history feeling bullish on all kinds of intelligence. 'There are things AI will do very well,' he said. 'There are still going to be things that humans can do better.' Write to Ben Cohen at The High-Schoolers Who Just Beat the World's Smartest AI Models The High-Schoolers Who Just Beat the World's Smartest AI Models


Hans India
an hour ago
- Hans India
Google introduces AI Skill Academy in India
New Delhi: Tech giant Google on Monday said that it has launched the Google News Initiative (GNI) AI Skills Academy, in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) here. According to the company, the new initiative is aimed at equipping Indian newsrooms with the knowledge and tools they need to thrive in an AI-powered future. "Continuing our commitment to collaborate with news organisations across India and bring them Google's best-in-class technology, we're excited to announce the launch of the Google News Initiative AI Skills Academy in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), Department of New Media," the tech giant said in a statement. This will be a 10-week, hybrid training series, which is designed to equip newsrooms and media educators with foundational AI understanding and practical skills. Participants will learn to leverage Google's AI tools like NotebookLM, Gemini, AI Studio and Pinpoint to streamline workflows, boost efficiency, and free up valuable time for deeper and more creative research and in-depth, diverse storytelling. Launched by Google in an academic partnership with IIMC and with training support from How India Lives, this hybrid programme will empower participants to apply AI tools across a range of relevant use-cases. The programme will offer weekly deep dives, practical exercises, dedicated mentoring, and problem-solving sessions. This programme has been curated to provide participants with support to leverage AI to perform newsroom tasks more efficiently. "We're also proud to support IIMC in training media educators and students across its campuses in six cities in India," Google stated. This collaboration is a major step towards empowering media professionals and media educators with essential AI skills. "As AI transforms journalism, this initiative will help them stay ahead. We intend to promote responsible innovation and enhance creativity in storytelling. IIMC is happy to be part of this initiative that will also help train students across our six campuses', said Nimish Rustagi, Registrar, Indian Institute of Mass Communication.