Intel's New CEO Cut 25,000 Jobs by Bringing the Entire Chip Division Under Himself.

On July 24, 2025, Intel announced it would cut more than 25,000 jobs by the end of the year. That is one-quarter of the company's workforce. The cuts follow another 15,000 laid off in 2024, and another 15,000 in April 2025. CEO Lip-Bu Tan, appointed in March, was cutting jobs faster than new employees arrived.

But the structural point lies buried in the announcement. Tan did not just reduce headcount. He flattened the organizational chart. Core chip development teams now report directly to him, not through layers of management.

This matters because it determines who decides. When a division head runs an engineering team, that division head can say no to the CEO. When the team reports directly to the CEO, there is no one in between who has standing to object. Decisions accelerate because no one below the CEO has veto power.

Tan had resigned from Intel's board in August 2024 after arguing with the previous CEO that the company should cut even more jobs and move faster. When he took the CEO role in March 2025, he had five months to prove his argument. By removing the management layer between himself and the engineering teams, he removed the people who would have slowed him down by asking questions or requesting data. He also announced strategic divestitures, like selling 51 percent of Altera to Silver Lake, without the division head blocking it.

What I would look for: whether the teams reporting directly to Tan stay there once he stabilizes the company. Whether a new layer of management re-emerges as the company moves toward growth. Whether Tan's successors try to delegate some of these teams back down the chain or whether he has permanently restructured how Intel makes decisions.

The bigger lesson is that announcing a reorganization and announcing job cuts can be the same announcement. Cutting the people between the CEO and execution is a way to break an existing power structure without saying you are breaking it.