Latest news with #Fab34
Irish Independent
24-04-2025
- Business
- Irish Independent
Intel's Irish staff may wait weeks to find out how many affected by confirmed job cuts
Intel 'won't have a [finalised] headcount number' for its overall cuts until July, the tech firm has said on a conference call after its quarterly earnings. However, Intel's new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, said that layoffs are coming in its next financial quarter. "There is no way around the fact that these critical changes will reduce the size of our workforce," he wrote in an email to employees. "As I said when I joined, we need to make some very hard decisions to put our company on a solid footing for the future. This will begin in Q2 and we will move as quickly as possible over the next several months." In a note posted after its quarterly earnings report on Thursday night, the company added that cuts would involve "streamlining the organisation, eliminating management layers', with no further detail on the sectors to be targeted, other than that it intended to shrink expenses in 'R&D, marketing, general and administrative' divisions. Yesterday, Bloomberg reported that Intel planned to cut its workforce by 20pc. Almost all of Intel's staff in Ireland are based at its Leixlip, Kildare manufacturing facility. Under Irish employment law, Intel is required to inform the government if it intends to make staff redundant here. The struggling chip company remains one of Ireland's largest employers and has been a mainstay of the country's industrial setup since it set up its first plant there in 1989, investing more than €30bn in chip-making operations. Lip-Bu Tan is seen as a costcutter by nature, having left the Intel board last year over a dispute with the then CEO, Pat Gelsinger, over the company having too many staff. Intel had already announced significant layoffs last year, cutting numbers by around 15,000 to leave the company's headcount at just over 100,000 worldwide. In 2023, Intel opened the first part of a new €17bn Fab 34 plant, complete with high-end chip making equipment that can make the company's new advanced AI chips, its brand new 1.8 nanometre '18A' variant on which it is basing a chunk of its future survival. In 2024, Intel sold 49pc of the aforementioned Fab 34 Leixlip facility to a private hedge fund, Apollo, for $11bn. It recently announced a 'foundry' plan to make chips for other companies, like industry-leading TSMC does.
Irish Times
23-04-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
Intel and Ireland: from world's most valuable chipmaker to struggling also-ran
Just five years ago, Intel was the world's most valuable chipmaker. Yet, in a technology world now consumed by AI innovation and dominated by other companies, most notably Nvidia, its fortunes have changed drastically. In recent times Intel's shares have plummeted more than 50 per cent and its market capitalisation stands at about $102 billion. As well as losing ground to chip rivals, it is under pressure to sell off its loss-making manufacturing business. Intel says it contributed €3.73 billion to the Irish economy in 2023 and was responsible for 0.7 per cent of overall GDP. As well as employing 4,900 people, it supports about 770 Irish suppliers with €284 million in annual expenditure. Ireland has had a long, mutually beneficial relationship with the US giant. Here is how it has played out amid recent difficulties. READ MORE 2019 – After three decades in Ireland, construction begins on the €17 billion Fab 34 in Leixlip. The multi-year project would double the manufacturing capacity in Ireland, enabling the production of Intel 4 and Intel 3, the company's most advanced process technologies. July, 2022 – Demand for its PC chips cools off from pandemic highs. Intel lowers its full-year revenue forecast. Shares fall. October, 2022 – The firm plans a major reduction in headcount. The company is battling a steep decline in product demand and is struggling to regain market share ceded to rivals. With pledges to slash costs, it looks at staff reductions and slower spending on new plants to net savings of $3 billion (€2.6 billion) by the following year. December, 2022 – Staff in Kildare are told to consider taking unpaid leave amid a slowdown in demand for its products and 15 per cent drop in PC sales. January, 2023 – About $8 billion is wiped off the company's market value following dismal earnings projections and unease at the slump in the PC market. Revenue forecasts are $3 billion below estimates. February, 2023 – Intel slashes its dividend payment to the lowest level in 16 years in an effort to preserve cash and focus on its turnaround. It says 'improved financial flexibility will support the critical investments needed to execute Intel's transformation during this period of macroeconomic uncertainty.' May, 2023 – Nvidia becomes the first chipmaker to hit a $1 trillion valuation. September, 2023 – Kildare's Fab 34 facility opens. Intel chief executive Pat Gelsinger says its 'critical chip' is the most advanced it has ever produced and will 'enable AI everywhere'. January, 2024 – The first batch of Intel's most power-efficient processor, the Meteor Lake, to aid AI and machine learning capabilities are shipped in what is dubbed its 'largest architectural shift in 40 years'. March, 2024 – Competitor Nvidia unveils its latest more powerful artificial intelligence chips with eye on extending industry dominance. June, 2024 – Apollo Global Management buys 49 per cent stake in Intel's Leixlip plant for $11 billion. August, 2024 – Intel moves to cut almost 17,000 jobs and suspend dividends as it attempts to restructure to compete artificial intelligence. The cuts are part of a $10 billion trim, but shares still fall 13 per cent. Management in Ireland begins consultations with staff on voluntary redundancies, understood to be open to about 4,000 people but with no specific target number. September 2024 – Staff told of plans to close its facility at Shannon by late 2025, with the base for the firm's operations moving to Leixlip. November, 2024 – Company books a €17.2 billion set of restructuring and asset impairment charges in an attempt to rebuild competitiveness. December, 2024 – As troubles continue to mount at the chipmaker, chief executive Pat Gelsinger says he will step down. March, 2025 – Former board member and semiconductor veteran Lip-Bu Tan (65) is named as replacement chief executive in a bid to revitalise the ailing company. Shares jump more than 11 per cent. April, 2025 – Intel agrees to sell its Altera chip unit to private equity group Silver Lake to raise cash. If follows a cost-cutting move in January which saw it separate Intel Capital into a new standalone fund. April, 2025 – News emerges the company is to cut more than 20 per cent of staff globally.
Irish Examiner
23-04-2025
- Business
- Irish Examiner
Analysis: Intel's Irish workers are too valuable to cut
Once the domineering force in computing and data centre processors, technology giant Intel's inattentive response to the global AI shift has led to it ceding critical ground to its largest rivals. The chipmaker is now struggling to keep up with key competitor Nvidia, which saw revenue climb to more than $39bn in its last fiscal quarter on the back of its datacenter unit, responsible for powering most generative AI models, which continues to soar in demand. In addition, rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing saw revenue in its last quarter total $26.4bn, also underpinned by resilient demand for advanced chips used in AI applications. Meanwhile, struggling chipmaker Intel saw revenue fall by 7% to just over $14bn in its latest fiscal quarter, with the company due to release earnings for the past three months on Thursday, which will offer the clearest look yet at the company's latest strategy to reverse operational lapses. In the past 12 months, Intel's stock has declined by about 43%, closing on Tuesday at $19.51, a far cry from its $34 share price in April 2024. However, also expected this week are plans by the embattled chipmaker to cut 20% of its staff, as new CEO Lip-Bu Tan aims to eliminate bureaucracy and streamline leadership across the firm. Assuming the top role just last month, Mr Tan has vowed to spin off company assets that he deems are not central to Intel's mission. The latest reported cuts follow efforts by the company in August last year to slash around 15,000 jobs. Intel had 108,900 employees at the end of 2024, down from 124,800 the previous year. Of that number, some 5,000 workers are based here in Ireland, concentrated primarily in the company's campus in Leixlip, Kildare. Some 300 employees are based at the company's research and development base in Shannon, however, the company announced last year that it would close this facility by the end of 2025 as part of its savings plan, with staff being offered the opportunity to move to remote working. Since 1989, Intel has invested more than €30bn in its Irish operations, with its Leixlip base home to the company's European manufacturing hub. In 2023, the chipmaker opened its €17bn Fab 34 factory, the largest construction project to ever be undertaken in Ireland, according to Intel, which doubled the chipmaker's manufacturing space in Ireland. In June last year, it was announced that asset management firm Apollo Global would provide more than €10bn to Intel to buy a 49% stake in the Fab 34 facility, with the transaction allowing the chipmaker to retain majority ownership and control the plant while also having access to funding needed to pursue future expansions. Intel's Irish base is its second-largest after the US and is paramount to the chipmaker's global operations. Its Leixlip campus is poised to produce the majority of its Intel 4 technology, which includes the company's extreme ultraviolet (EUV) chips, the most advanced semiconductor manufacturing technology on the market. According to Intel, EUVs play a 'critical role' in driving the company towards its goals of delivering five nodes in four years and regaining leadership in process technology by 2025. The Fab 34 facility in Leixlip is also part of what the company calls a 'first-of-its-kind end-to-end leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing value chain in Europe,' with the site being combined with a wafer fabrication facility in Germany and an assembly and test facility in Poland. Yet, despite Ireland being a cornerstone of Intel's global manufacturing footprint, the sheer size of its operations makes it unlikely it will come out completely unscathed by the chipmaker's latest round of global layoffs. Around 5% of all Intel staff are based in Ireland, with a 20% reduction in staff, if applied uniformly across operations, equating to more than 900 Irish job losses. But with a new facility able to serve viable markets for another few years, and a need for Intel to keep Fab 34's minority shareholder sweet to avoid any financial penalties, cutting a large number of Irish staff seems counterproductive from a purely business standpoint. Hence, while administrative and soon-to-be remote working R&D staff may be caught in the firing line of Intel's latest restructuring scheme, it seems unlikely that those on the ground on Fab 34 and the broader Leixlip campus will be hurt. On a global scale, they are simply too valuable.
