Intel to cut 24,000 jobs in 2025, halt work on big factory projects

Intel

Intel is making some big and difficult changes. The company has announced it will let go of around 24,000 employees this year, that’s nearly one out of every four people who worked there at the end of 2024. The news came during Intel’s earnings report for the second quarter of 2025.

Intel says it will now focus on becoming smaller and more efficient, according to a report by The Verge. As part of this move, it’s cancelling major projects in Germany and Poland, where it had earlier planned to build huge factories that could have created thousands of jobs. In Costa Rica, the company is also shutting down part of its operations and moving that work to Vietnam. About 2,000 employees in Costa Rica will be affected, though many will stay on in other roles.

Intel’s new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, is the man behind these tough decisions. He took over during a challenging time for the company, which has been struggling to keep up with competitors, especially in the fast-growing world of artificial intelligence. He admitted that Intel spent too much money building new factories before making sure there was enough demand for the chips they’d produce.

“I don’t believe in building things and hoping customers will show up,” Tan said during a call with investors. “We will now only build what people actually need.”

This shake-up is costing the company a lot — nearly $2 billion to handle the layoffs and restructuring. And it’s still losing money. Intel reported a loss of $2.9 billion this quarter, even though it made $12.9 billion in revenue.

Some of Intel’s businesses are doing okay. Its data center unit, which powers servers and cloud services, is slightly up. But the chips it makes for regular computers are not selling as well as before.

Still, Intel says it’s on track to release new chips for laptops later this year and into 2026. Tan also said he’ll personally review all major chip designs going forward, to avoid the mistakes of the past.

The company says more changes are coming soon — including new leadership for its data center division and a clearer plan for how it wants to compete in the booming AI space.