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Intel is preparing to unveil plans to prune more than 20% of its workforce, a move that the storied chipmaker believes would reduce bureaucracy, according to a report by Bloomberg News,

citing a person with knowledge of the matter.

According to the report, the significant job cuts are a part of Intel’s plan to streamline management and rebuild an engineering-driven culture. This move would be the first major

organisational restructuring under the newly appointed CEO, Lip-Bu Tan.

This move follows Intel’s decision to let go of 15,000 jobs in layoffs that were announced in August. According to Intel’s annual report, it had 108,900 employees at the end of 2024,

vis-a-vis 124,800 employees in the previous year. 

Intel is scheduled to report its quarterly results later this week, and many industry observers are expecting Tan to divulge more on its turnaround strategy, that has seen Tan avowing the

spin-off of the assets that he believes are not central to Intel’s core competencies. Last week, Intel sold a majority 51% stake in its programmable chips unit to receive about $3.4 billion

in cash.

Once the undisputed king of semiconductors, Intel now finds itself trailing the very revolution it helped spark. In the breakneck race to dominate artificial intelligence, the Silicon Valley

stalwart has been outflanked by nimbler rivals like Nvidia and AMD, whose chips power everything from ChatGPT to autonomous vehicles. As the AI boom reshapes global tech hierarchies, Intel

is grappling with an existential crisis—struggling to reclaim relevance in a market that prizes speed, specialisation, and scale. 

CEO Pat Gelsinger has staked billions on a dramatic comeback, from building out advanced chip foundries in the U.S. and Europe to acquiring Israeli AI startup Habana Labs and launching Gaudi

processors to challenge Nvidia’s CUDA empire. Yet, delays in product rollouts, tepid market reception, and ballooning costs have plagued the turnaround, culminating in Gelsinger being

ousted from its role.

Wall Street, once enamoured, is wary—Intel’s stock has lagged, even as AI-linked valuations skyrocketed. Intel was supposed to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the 2022 Chips and

Science Act, but the future of the legislation itself is in limbo after President Donald Trump's re-election.

For a company long synonymous with computing’s golden age, the AI era has exposed painful truths. Intel is not just fighting competitors—it is battling its own legacy of complacency and

missteps. Whether it can transition from a fallen titan to a phoenix of the post-silicon age remains Silicon Valley’s most expensive question mark.

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