AMD has reportedly confirmed plans to put off totally 4% of its international workforce. A 2023 estimate put AMD’s workforce at 26,000, so the firings look set to impression round 1,000 AMD workers.
It isn’t clear precisely what precipitated the transfer by AMD. In line with WCCFTech, posts on AMD-themed message boards together with Crew Blind started to emerge, reporting job losses from a number of groups.
AMD was approached concerning the stories and confirmed that 4% of the worldwide workforce was being let go. The corporate stated the layoffs have been as a result of “aligning our sources with our largest progress alternatives.”
Taken at face worth, the most important and most evident “alternative” for AMD is AI. So, the implication is that AMD is probably going realigning sources for a extra concerted assault on Nvidia’s dominance within the megabucks datacenter GPU market.
AMD additionally defined that the transfer was a part of “various focused steps that may sadly end in lowering our international workforce by roughly 4%.” AMD added it’s “dedicated to treating impacted workers with respect and serving to them via this transition.”
Past that, the specifics aren’t clear. We do not know whether or not any specific groups have taken the brunt of the layoffs or whether or not the axe has fallen extra evenly throughout AMD’s operations.
Worryingly, one apparent candidate for cuts may be gaming. Ultimately depend, AMD’s gaming division, which incorporates PC graphics and customized chips for video games consoles like Xbox and PS5, amounted to simply 6.8% of AMD’s total revenues, and shrinking quick. On the very least, gaming hardly looks as if certainly one of AMD’s “largest progress alternatives”.
Barely oddly, the information comes barely two weeks after AMD posted file revenues, partly boosted by the corporate’s nascent AI GPU gross sales. Nevertheless, AMD’s share worth has truly fallen since that announcement, largely as a result of it got here alongside steering for the 4th quarter of 2024 that regarded a good deal much less bullish.
As I write these phrases, AMD’s share worth is down from a current peak of $166 on October 29 to $140 proper now, a hefty 15% drop.
In fact, with regards to layoffs, Intel has AMD completely licked. In August, Intel revealed plans to put off no fewer than 15,000 workers. In fact, Intel had a a lot bigger preliminary worker base to start with. In order that amounted to fifteen% of its workforce. Nonetheless a serious chunk, however not fairly the decimation that 15,000 would signify within the context of AMD’s 26,000-strong workforce.
Anyway, layoffs are really horrible information for these instantly concerned, even when they’re occasionally obligatory. This is hoping AMD does not must let any extra workers go and the “realignment” achieves the corporate’s goals.
