Intel’s Israel staff could face another wave of layoffs as global job cuts loom
US chipmaker, one of Israel’s largest employers, has 9,350 people working at three R&D centers and a manufacturing plant; reported layoffs could affect as many as 1,800 workers
Sharon Wrobel is a tech reporter for The Times of Israel
Intel’s Israeli employees could be facing major layoffs as the struggling US chipmaker and one of Israel’s largest employers is slated to cut more than 20 percent of its workforce around the world.
Bloomberg, which reported the layoff plans, said that Intel seeks to reduce bureaucratic inefficiencies, “streamline management and rebuild an engineering-driven culture.” If the 20% cutback were to be applied to Intel’s Israeli operations, more than 1,800 employees could be affected by the layoffs.
The move comes as the tech giant in 2024 already cut around 15,000 jobs, or about 15% of its global workforce, including in Israel, ending 2024 with 108,900 employees, down from 124,800 the previous year. Intel does not disclose details about which divisions or locations are affected by global layoffs.
The semiconductor giant has been present in Israel since 1974 when it started its first operations with a handful of employees. Since then, it has grown into the country’s largest private sector employer in the local high-tech sector. Back in 2017, Intel bought Israel’s Mobileye for over $15 billion, which at the time marked the largest exit for an Israeli tech company.
Before the recent wave of layoffs and other measures, the chipmaker employed almost 12,000 employees at its three R&D centers — in Haifa, Petah Tikva and Jerusalem — as well as at its manufacturing plant in Kiryat Gat. As a result of the recent streamlining and downsizing processes, including job cuts and closed operations, Intel now has 9,350 employees in Israel.
“Israeli high-tech has been in much uncertainty during the last two years. We are seeing many companies re-evaluating the growth of the workforce they hired following the corona [Covid-19] pandemic,” Dun & Bradstreet Israel’s head of high-tech Yael Belgrai Cohen told The Times of Israel. “Companies are restructuring and laying off employees based on performance to become more efficient, and in some cases, they do it to hire elsewhere at a lower cost.”
“In addition, the AI revolution is making some work processes faster, reducing the need for some employees,” said Belgrai Cohen.
The Israeli high-tech industry entered a period of significant decline in investments since the middle of 2022 as part of global trends, which slowed down globally during 2023, but they deepened in Israel as a result of the proposed judicial reform and the Hamas war that followed at the end of that year.
As part of last year’s global streamlining measures, Intel is said to have laid off a few hundred employees from its development centers in Haifa, Petah Tikva, and Jerusalem. In October last year, Intel shut down the operations of Israeli cloud computing tech startup Granulate, which it bought back in 2022 for $650 million.
In June, the US chipmaker halted the expansion of a major factory project in Israel, which was planned to pour an extra $15 billion toward the expansion of its chip manufacturing plant in Kiryat Gat, in the south of the country.
“For more than a decade, all the multinational companies and conglomerates that operate multiple R&D centers in Israel showed substantial resilience and commitment and brought stability as they continued to hire a diversity of people, including engineers and other professionals,” said Adv. Karin Mayer Rubinstein, CEO and President of the Israel Advanced Technology Industries Association (IATI). “We are confident that their commitment to Israel on a national level, and as an ecosystem, will remain very strong.”
In a D&B annual ranking of the best firms to work for in Israel in 2024, chipmaker giant Nvidia moved up to the number one spot from eighth place last year. Nvidia is among the international tech giants that have expanded their presence in Israel since launching its first operations in the country in 2016 and opening an AI research center two years later. Its activities in Israel are already the firm’s largest outside of the US, where the chipmaker employs about 4,000 workers in seven R&D centers, including Yokne’am, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ra’anana and Beersheba.
Meanwhile, Intel’s woes pushed the chipmaker down four spots to 18th place in the same ranking.
Both Mayer Rubinstein and Belgrai Cohen noted that due to a shortage of engineers, many multinationals (such as Nvidia) are hunting for talent and skilled technical staff, suggesting that affected employees from the expected wave of layoffs could be absorbed at other tech companies.
“Most of the multinationals are in Israel because of their R&D centers, the innovation, and know-how,” said Mayer Rubinstein. “Engineers on the lookout will have a job elsewhere very fast, because we still have a shortage of engineers, and Israel has the best tech talent in the world.”
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