Intel to slash thousands of jobs by the end of the year
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. '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 . 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.
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