Intel reveals it will lose 33,000 employees this year and retreat in Germany, Poland, and Costa Rica

In April, Intel attempted to announce layoffs without announcing layoffs. “We have not set any headcount reduction target,” Intel spokesperson Sophie Metzger told The Verge. But the company has laid off thousands of employees since — and today, in the company’s Q2 2025 earnings, it has revealed that Intel will dramatically shrink as a result of those layoffs. Intel says it will retreat from planned projects in Germany and Poland, end its assembly and test operations in Costa Rica, and finish 2025 with just around 75,000 employees in total.

Since Intel employed 109,800 people at the end of 2024, that means the company is pushing out around 33,000 people this year — shrinking the entire company by roughly one-third. It’s just the latest revelation about how deep Intel’s new CEO Lip-Bu Tan is willing to cut as he attempts to flatten the organization after years of troubles and a lackluster response to the AI boom; in late June, Intel shut down its automotive chipmaking business and revealed it’d lay off up to 20 percent of silicon factory workers; in July, it spun out its RealSense computer vision business.

Now, in Costa Rica, where Intel employs over 3,400 people, the company will “consolidate its assembly and test operations in Costa Rica into its larger sites in Vietnam.” In Germany and Poland, where it was planning to spend tens of billions of dollars respectively on “mega-fabs” that would employ 3,000 workers, and on an assembly and test facility that would employ 2,000 workers, the company will “no longer move forward with planned projects” and is apparently axing them entirely.

Intel has had a presence in Poland since 1993, however, and the company did not say its R&D facilities there are closing. (Intel had previously pressed pause on the new Germany and Poland projects “by approximately two years” back in 2024.)

The company is also cutting back in Ohio: “Intel will further slow the pace of construction in Ohio to ensure spending is aligned with market demand.”

It’s not clear if the layoffs will slow now that we’re over halfway through the year. Intel states today that it has already “completed the majority of the planned headcount actions it announced last quarter to reduce its core workforce by approximately 15 percent,” but 15 percent would not take us close to the headcount of 75,000 that Intel is projecting by year’s end.

So far, partially because of the $1.9 billion that Intel is incurring to do these layoffs and this restructuring, Intel is still losing money this quarter; it’s reporting a $2.9 billion loss on $12.9 billion in quarterly revenue (which is itself flat year over year). Amidst the ongoing AI boom, Intel’s data center business is only up 4 percent year-over-year to $3.9 billion, while its PC chips are down 3 percent to $7.9 billion. Intel’s foundry business where it does chipmaking for other customers is up 3 percent to $4.4 billion.

Developing…we’re adding more to this story from Intel’s earnings report now.