GlobalFoundries cut operating costs this week by quantifying the number of employees it plans to lay off in the coming weeks due to softening demand for semiconductors. The company plans to cut his workforce to less than 800 globally by the end of December. Workforce reductions will primarily target non-manufacturing positions.
GlobalFoundries chief executive Thomas Caulfield told employees at a virtual conference that employees in the US and Singapore will be notified next week. German workers, on the other hand, will be notified later about the layoffs. He did not quantify how many people will be laid off in the US, Germany and Singapore. Still, he stressed that the company will focus primarily on cutting non-manufacturing roles, though some fab employees will also be laid off.
GlobalFoundries employs about 14,000 people worldwide, so 800 people make up about 5.7% of the company’s global staff. VTDigger.
“As part of our recent all-employees meeting, we have responded to the current macroeconomic environment by reducing corporate and manufacturing overheads and selectively reducing our workforce to less than 800 people worldwide. We have shared the cost-cutting measures we are taking at the end of the year,” company spokesperson Julie Moinehan wrote in an email to VTDigger.
It is unclear whether the 800 positions worldwide represent total reductions or layoffs in calendar year 2022.
Meanwhile, the layoffs are said to save GlobalFoundries about $200 million a year, which may not sound like much in the grand scheme of things. But the world’s fourth-largest contract maker of chips is now a public company after years of losing money when it was a privately held company controlled by Mubadala, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign state-owned investment fund. Now that we have become a company, we want to maintain our profits.
GlobalFoundries serves over 200 customers and has five manufacturing locations on different continents. Amid the 2020-2021 chip demand boom, GlobalFoundries has announced significant plans to expand capacity at its fabs in Germany, Singapore, and the United States. A public-private partnership to support increased demand, but no additional details were disclosed.
