‘We are committed to treating all impacted employees with respect and providing resources to support them through this transition,’ says an Intel spokesperson.
Intel has confirmed to CRN that it is conducting layoffs in its data center group “as part of our broader strategy to become a more focused and efficient company,” with the news coming just before Intel’s second fiscal quarter earnings report Thursday.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker is working to align its data center group “organization to ensure it has the right roles and skills in place to position the business for long-term success,” an Intel spokesperson told CRN in an email Tuesday. “We are committed to treating all impacted employees with respect and providing resources to support them through this transition.”
The layoffs are not expected to affect product commitments and road maps. Intel has undergone massive changes since Lip-Bu Tan became CEO in March 2025 and promised to turn around the vendor. Last summer, Intel said it wanted to end the year with a core workforce of about 75,000 employees, which would have marked nearly one-quarter of its workers leaving within 12 months.
Intel ended 2025 with about 85,100 workers, down about 22 percent from the 108,900 workers it had in December 2024.
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Intel Restructuring
Chris Bogan, vice president of sales at Houston-based Intel solution provider Mark III Systems, told CRN in an interview that Mark III’s chip business across the board is growing, and in the CPU part of Mark II’s business that includes Intel customers are looking to right-size and optimize the CPUs they use.
“Everything that was making headlines was only GPUs, and GPUs are still incredibly important,” Bogan said. “But the CPUs are really holding their own and growing well, also. So it’s one of those where they may have been overshadowed, but from our perspective, they’ve been growing this whole time.”
Bogan said he approves of Intel’s innovation road map under Tan and wants to see the vendor continue to invest in its product portfolio.
Mark III’s value-add for customers has been assessing the right technology for the workload, especially important with tight supply constraints on GPUs and growing costs for a variety of data center components like memory, he said.
“It’s really just customers realizing that technology is a central protocol for keeping a business running,” Bogan said. “In the past, I think they were asked to go do the best they could with what they had versus being strategic. And I think technology is being seen as more strategic.”
Intel’s partner program goals for 2026 include continued focus on top Prestige tier partners while still delivering value to the broad channel, increased focus on deal-based incentives and increased partner-sourced revenue while driving key product transitions, according to CRN’s 2026 Partner Program Guide.
Intel’s stock rose on the layoff news, up about 8 percent from market close Monday to Tuesday afternoon Eastern time, trading at about $105 a share.
In April, Intel reported first-quarter revenue of $13.6 billion, up 7 percent year over year, largely thanks to the 22 percent growth it reported for its data center business in the face of pent-up AI demand.
