Intel

Intel is cutting tens of thousands of employees, cutting investment around the world, and moving away from entire businesses too. After shutting down its automotive chipmaking business and spinning out its RealSense computer vision business, it’s now spinning out its networking business too, reports CRN, with Reuters and TechCrunch corroborating. Intel’s also selling off its majority stake in Altera, and finished off selling its flash memory business this year.

Lip-Bu Tan on today’s earnings call:

“Twenty, 30 years ago, we are really the leader,” CEO Lip-Bu Tan said in a message to employees, as reported by The Oregonian. “Now I think the world has changed. We are not in the top 10 semiconductor companies.”

In a memo seen by The Oregonian, Intel manufacturing Vice President Naga Chandrasekara tells workers that the company could cut between 15 and 20 percent of workers in its Foundry division. “These are difficult actions but essential to meet our affordability challenges and current financial position of the company,” Chandrasekara writes, according to The Oregonian.

Despite replies from Intel’s X account telling gamers to “stay tuned,” there won’t be any news on that front, as Intel’s Thomas Hannaford sent over a statement saying, “The social media posts were in reference to Arc Pro news we plan to share at Computex. We are not sharing any future products or plans.”

Intel’s XeSS 2 launched last December with just two games in tow — but five months later, your Series 2 Core Ultra laptop chip (e.g. Ultra 9 285H) or Battlemage desktop card (e.g. Arc B580) can can do tailored low latency frame gen in a full 19 titles.

Intel might have already shifted its path away from building AI PCs with on-package memory, but if you have a laptop (like Dell’s XPS 13 9350) with the Core Ultra 200V chipset inside, then this news is for you.

Bloomberg reported 20 percent job cuts were coming this week, but Intel’s Q1 2025 earnings release isn’t saying that. Intel is “taking actions” that include “streamlining the organization, eliminating management layers and enabling faster decision-making,” but doesn’t say how many jobs. It does hope to save an extra $0.5 billion in 2025, more in 2026, and will have “restructuring charges associated with these actions.”

Intel had over 120,000 employees after its 2022 layoffs, and its 2024 layoffs brought that total down to 108,900, but the company may downsize again. Bloomberg’s single “person with knowledge of the matter” says new CEO Lip-Bu Tan will cut 20 percent more.

The investment firm Silver Lake will purchase 51 percent of Altera, a programmable chips company Intel acquired in 2015, for $4.46 billion.

In 2021, Intel’s VP of graphics research Anton Kaplanyan tweeted that its XeSS super-resolution and framerate enhancing tech would be “open-source” and “coming soon.” Intel said it would be open-source numerous times.

Lip-Bu Tan, who takes over as Intel CEO on Tuesday, is planning to overhaul the struggling chipmaker’s manufacturing business, while also adjusting its “approach to AI and staff cuts,” according to a report from Reuters. This reportedly includes resuming plans to produce an AI chip, which the company canceled earlier this year.

After a test of its 18A process last year reportedly failed, Reuters says both Nvidia and Broadcom are actively testing it. The 18A process is a key to Intel’s plan to reestablish itself in the race to build new AI chips.

Following reports that TSMC is considering buying Intel’s chip manufacturing business at the Trump administration’s encouragement, The Wall Street Journal writes that Broadcom is separately kicking Intel’s tires, but a bid is only likely “if it finds a partner for Intel’s manufacturing business.”

Yesterday, President Trump accused TSMC: “Taiwan took our chip business away.”

“I am not happy with where we are today,” Intel interim co-CEO Michelle Johnston Holthaus says of the company’s AI server business on today’s earnings call, a business which has not met its promises with Gaudi.

We used to write things like “Intel leads $21 million investment in Tobii’s eye-tracking system,” but that might become harder: Intel Capital, a division which invested $20B in over 1,800 companies, is spinning out into its own firm later in 2025.

Ever wanted to have dinner with The Verge’s staff, shooting the shit about gadgets? Here’s the next best thing: we filmed a roundtable chat over our actual team dinner at CES in Las Vegas; this clip is just a taste.

As proof it’s on track with its next low-power laptop chip — the chip that will itself prove out Intel’s 18A process, which could in turn prove whether the company can regain silicon manufacturing leadership — Intel showed journalists these working samples.

I know everything in Vegas is for sale, but wouldn’t the Sphere be more of an attraction if the structure displayed more incredible 3D art and fewer ads? (This is one of like three we saw repeatedly looped while riding a ferris wheel.)

Asus is introducing an AMD version of its Apex motherboards at CES this week, which had previously been exclusive to Intel since 2017. The ROG Crosshair X870E Apex and Ryzen 9 9950X are already setting overclocking records, and that’s before the 9950X3D launches soon. Meanwhile, Intel is busy rolling out performance fixes for its latest Arrow Lake CPUs to try and improve gaming performance.

Did Intel’s board “retire” him because he botched something, or did it rug pull before he could finish the job? Either way, Gelsinger is now praying for Intel’s employees and defending its all-important 18A silicon process on X. He agrees it’s “fake news” that yields are bad, and explains yields depend on chip size. (You can fit more tiny chips on a wafer than big ones!)