Intel aims to reduce its global workforce by about 15% by the end of this year, through workforce reductions and attrition.
Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Intel, says the goal is to end up with about 75 000 employees.
A large portion of the workforce reductions have already taken place, he adds, along with the streamlining of about 50% of the management layers.
“I know the past few months have not been easy,” Tan writes in a note to employees. “We are making hard but necessary decisions to streamline the organisation, drive greater efficiency and increase accountability at every level of the company. These actions are critical to strengthening our competitive position going forward, but it means we are saying goodbye to valued colleagues.”
The company will also implement its return-to-office policy in September.
Moving forward, Tan says Intel will focus on three critical areas:
Become a more financially disciplined foundry
The company’s factory footprint has become fragmented and underutilized, Tan says. In future, Intel will follow a systematic approach to growing its factory footprint that’s fully aligned with the needs of customers.
To this end, the company will not move ahead with previously planned projects in Germany and Poland, and will consolidate its assembly and test operations in Costa Rica to larger sites in Vietnam and Malaysia. Construction in Ohio will also be slowed.
“We are also sharpening the focus and financial discipline of our technology development investments,” Tan writes. “Job number one is ramping Intel 18A at scale. Intel 18A and Intel 18A-P are critical nodes for Intel products and will drive meaningful wafer volumes well into the next decade – starting with Panther Lake later this year.”
Looking further ahead, Intel is developing Intel14A as a foundry node from the ground up, with investment based on confirmed customer commitments.
Revitalise the Intel x86 ecosystem
“ We will focus on growing share in our core client and server segments. To that end, I am working closely with our product and engineering teams to strengthen our roadmap, “Tan says.
In client, Panther Lake is Intel’s top priority, and it will also continue with progress on Nova Lake to close gaps in the high-end desktop space.
In data centre, the company is focusing on regaining share as it ramps Granite Rapids while improving capabilities for hyperscale workloads.
“Across client and data center, I’ve directed our teams to define next-generation product families with clean and simple architectures, better cost structures and simplified SKU stacks,” Tan says. “In addition, I have instituted a policy where every major chip design is reviewed and approved by me before tape-out. This discipline will improve our execution and reduce development costs.”
Refine the AI strategy
Intel plans to focus its AI efforts on developing a cohesive silicon, system and software stack strategy. “In the past, we have approached AI with a traditional, silicon- and training-centric mindset,” Tan says. “This needs to change – and we have already started incubating new capabilities while attracting new talent.”
He explains that the companies will concentrate its efforts on areas we can disrupt and differentiate, like inference and agentic AI.