Intel Trims A Few Hundred Workers In Cali Just In Time For Christmas

For 311 workers in Santa Clara and Folsom, California, it wasn't the Grinch who stole Christmas: it was Intel.

The x86 giant announced the layoffs in a series of worker adjustment and retraining notification (WARN) filings made to the US state's Employment Development Department.

The largest of these layoffs comes from Intel's Folsom offices, where the chipmaker operates a test floor and lab space. According to a WARN notice, received by the California EDD last week, 235 employees have been laid off permanently. In four separate filings, Intel said it planned to lay off another 76 workers at its headquarters in Santa Clara. All 311 of the layoffs take effect December 31. Intel employs about 110,000 people worldwide.

"Intel is working to accelerate its strategy while reducing costs through multiple initiatives, including some business and function-specific workforce reductions in areas across the company," an Intel spokesperson told The Register.

"We have more than 13,000 employees in California and continue to invest in areas core to our business, including our US-based manufacturing operations, to ensure we are well-positioned for long-term growth.

"These are difficult decisions, and we are committed to treating impacted employees with dignity and respect."

The layoffs cap off a challenging fiscal year for the processor giant, which kicked off Q1 2023 with a $2.8 billion loss. While the biz had returned to profitability in the second quarter, Intel was already well on its way to executing on its plan to cut $3 billion of annual spending in 2023 and $10 billion by 2025. According to California's WARN report, Intel laid off 1,714 workers at its Santa Clara, San Jose, and Folsom offices in 2023.

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In addition to human capital, Intel has canned a number of high-profile projects, and scrapped several product lines in an effort to reduce costs. This included the cancellation of $900 million worth of research and development facilities planned for Hillsboro, Oregon, and Haifa, Israel.

Before the year was out, CEO Pat Gelsinger had also taken the ax to Intel's server and PC divisions, and end-of-life'd the company's Blockscale crypto-mining chips. Around that same time, Intel canceled its Rialto Bridge accelerators and rewrote its datacenter GPU roadmap.

Ahead of Intel's Q3 earnings call in October, the chipmaker revealed it was spinning off its FPGA business with former Datacenter and AI group EVP Sandra Rivera at the helm. ®

PS: We also noticed Splunk laying off 176 people in San Francisco and Santa Clara this month, and Marvell ditching 65.