The cuts, set to begin mid-July, were confirmed internally by Intel Foundry boss Naga Chandrasekaran, who told staff the decision was necessary to curb costs and prop up the company's financials. Layoffs will be driven by business priorities, individual performance, and which projects are worth funding, he said.
According to a report by OregonLive, Intel plans to trim 15 to 20 per cent of its foundry workforce, meaning somewhere between 8,170 and 10,890 people worldwide could be affected. The company had 108,900 employees at the end of 2024, down from 124,800 the year before. Around half of those are estimated to work in manufacturing or related services.
Chipzilla won’t be offering golden handshakes or voluntary exits this time. Instead, it plans to cut selectively and keep the staff it deems most valuable. That’s unlikely to reassure anyone below the top layer, especially after similar cuts last year saw 3,000 jobs lost from its Oregon Silicon Forest operation, which still employs around 20,000 people.
Engineers involved in next-generation process technologies and techs running sensitive EUV and High-NA EUV lithography kit are considered safe, but the same can’t be said for tool operators and support staff, especially those whose roles could be replaced by automation or stripped out in a re-org.
Beyond the immediate human toll, the risk is that Intel ends up with brittle operations. Fewer people means slower response times when things break, lower morale and more burnout for those left behind. The company’s been claiming this is all part of an effort to flatten its bureaucracy, but it’s hard to cut this deep without bleeding somewhere vital.
Other Intel departments are also expected to see similar 15 to 20 per cent cuts later this year.
The scale of the culling also casts a long shadow over Intel’s government funding. The outfit landed $7.9 billion in CHIPS Act subsidies, $1 billion of which has already been dished out. But the rest is now under review by the Trump administration. Oregon’s own $115 million public pledge is also conditional on future hiring and tax numbers, both of which now look shaky.
If Chipzilla can’t hit those marks, it risks losing taxpayer cash too.