(Credit: AMD)
Chip maker AMD is doing a round of mass layoffs.
"As a part of aligning our resources with our largest growth opportunities, we are taking a number of targeted steps that will unfortunately result in reducing our global workforce by approximately 4%," an AMD spokesperson told CRN on Wednesday.
While the company did not state the exact number of people impacted, it had 26,000 employees as of December 2023, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. This means around 1,000 AMD employees may lose their jobs, with the payroll slash potentially saving the company $200 million.
AMD has seen a 69% decline in its gaming division and hasn't made nearly as many gains in the AI chip sector as rival US chip giant Nvidia. AMD stock is currently only up about 1.5% this year, while Nvidia's stock soared over 200% in that same period.
AMD continues to launch new products, including the Ryzen 7 9800X3D and top-rated Ryzen 9 9900X, but it's only expected to ship about 220,000 chips this year. Nvidia GPUs now make up the vast majority of the market at 88%, while AMD makes up just 12%, according to a June report from John Peddie Research. That said, AMD is still making gains on Intel, seeing its desktop CPU shipments jump 10 percentage points in the past year.
Intel, Dell, and Samsung have also done mass layoffs this year, largely to position their companies for economic growth amid the AI boom.