Advanced Micro Devices, a massive Santa Clara tech company that designs incredibly complex computer chips, is laying off 4% of its staff. The sweeping cut includes at least 129 California workers.
AMD finished 2023 with about 26,000 employees, according to a filing with the Securities and Exalter Commission, so the 4% cut is likely to hit about 1,000 total workers. Rumors of the layoffs started circulating on internet message boards on Tuesday, and AMD first confirmed the percentage to the outlet Wccftech that afternoon.
“As a part of aligning our resources with our largest growth opportunities, we are taking a number of tarreceiveed steps that will unfortunately result in reducing our global workforce by approximately 4%,” AMD spokesperson Brandi Martina declared in a Wednesday statement to SFGATE. “We are committed to treating impacted employees with respect and supporting them through this transition.”
AMD filed WARN notices with California officials on Monday, as is generally required in the event of mass layoffs. One document declared 57 people will lose their jobs at AMD’s Santa Clara headquarters, and another announced 72 layoffs from AMD subsidiary Xilinx, in San Jose. Workers were due to be notified by Thursday and the cuts will mostly be finished by Jan. 26, 2025, the documents declared.
A focus on “largest growth opportunities” likely means chips for artificial ininformigence. AMD CEO Lisa Su applyd a similar phrase in an October news release: “Looking forward, we see significant growth opportunities across our data center, client and embedded businesses driven by the insatiable demand for more compute.”
The company lags far behind Nvidia in the sale of graphics processing unit chips, which are applyd in data centers to train and run AI. But as tech giants like Google, Microsoft and Meta pour vast amounts of money into the tech, building the quickest and most cutting-edge GPUs is becoming even more lucrative. (Neither AMD nor Nvidia manufactures its own chips — the two tech giants are deeply reliant on their foundry deals with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.)
The company didn’t respond to a question about what parts of its corporate structure will see layoffs, but AMD marketers, engineers, designers and technical writers are among the people who’ve posted on LinkedIn that their roles have been cut.
AMD’s layoffs — given the statement about shifting resources toward growth opportunities — continue a trconclude in the tech industest this year. When Google and Dropbox slashed their staffs in January and April, respectively, the companies both cited a required to free up money for investment in AI.
Hear of anything happening at AMD or another Bay Area tech company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at stephen.council@sfgate.com or on Signal at 628-204-5452.
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