Jul. 25, 2025 –
The U.S. tech giant Intel has said that it is canceling plans to construct a semiconductor factory near the southwestern Polish city of Wrocław as part of a shake-up of its plans that also sees the axing of a German investment.
Intel (INTC.O) is going to end the year with a workforce that is over a fifth smaller than last year, it said on Thursday, and new CEO Lip Bu Tan presented a blueprint for a more cost-disciplined, streamlined chipmaker that would issue "no more blank checks."
The job cuts - a majority of which have been completed already - are part of an effort by Tan since he took the helm in March to turn around the storied U.S. chipmaker. Intel has divested businesses, laid off employees and redirected resources.
The company has underperformed due to years of management blunders. Intel has virtually no foothold in the booming AI chip industry that is dominated by Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab, and its longtime rival AMD (AMD.O), opens new tab has been gaining share in Intel's mainstay personal computer and server semiconductor markets. Its ambitious and costly plan for a chip contracting business that rivals that of Taiwan's TSMC (2330.TW), opens new tab has failed to take off.
But Tan on Thursday signaled that he had taken charge of the company and was trying to wrest it back from what he viewed as previous missteps.
"There are no more blank checks," Tan wrote in a memo to employees. "Every investment must make economic sense. We will build what our customers need, when they need it, and earn their trust through consistent execution."
But shares still fell 4.5% in extended trading after the company forecast steeper third-quarter losses than Wall Street estimated. Tan also told analysts on a conference call that he believes Intel's so-called 18A manufacturing process - in which his predecessor Pat Gelsinger had deeply invested - could generate a reasonable return only if it is used for Intel's own products. Reuters reported earlier this month that Tan is debating whether to quit offering that technology to external customers.
As part of the job cuts, Intel attempted to take a “surgical” approach and remove layers of middle management, finance chief David Zinsner told Reuters. “We took out about 50% of the layers of the company,” he said.