Qualcomm has told employees it plans to cut jobs around the world following its annual performance reviews, with affected staff expected to be notified starting in November. The plan was described in a memo from CEO Cristiano Amon and reported by Reuters.
Amon characterized the move as a "performance-focused reduction" meant to build a "stronger performance culture." He said the company would weigh organizational needs, business priorities, and employees' skills and expertise when deciding which positions are affected. "The reduction will address employees who have consistently fallen short of expectations," he said.
The memo did not say which departments would be hit or how many jobs would go. Qualcomm had roughly 52,000 employees at the end of its 2025 fiscal year, which typically closes in late September.
In the memo, Amon also pointed to the changing needs of the business. "As we have expanded the business, so have the competencies and skills we require," he wrote. "We must have the right people in the right roles so they can perform at their best and the company can continue to succeed."
The cuts follow a difficult stretch for the company, one of the world's largest suppliers of smartphone chips, with customers including Apple, Xiaomi, and Samsung. An industry-wide slump in consumer electronics sales, driven in part by rising memory costs that are dampening demand, has weighed on results. Qualcomm's third-quarter fiscal 2026 figures showed revenue down 4% from a year earlier and net income down 25%. Revenue from its core handset business fell 20% over the same period. The company reportedly booked $97 million in severance-related restructuring charges in the first nine months of its fiscal year.
Investors have taken notice. Qualcomm shares have gained just 1.5% so far in 2026, while the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index has risen almost 60%.
The company is responding by turning toward AI infrastructure and edge computing, a shift under way across the semiconductor industry. It unveiled its AI200 and AI250 AI inference accelerators in October 2025. After its latest earnings report projected lower quarterly profits than first estimated, Qualcomm said growth in its data center business would offset the lost revenue by fiscal year 2027. Mobile chips remain its core business, but data center silicon, automotive platforms, personal computing, and edge computing are seen as key future opportunities, all of which demand specialized engineering talent.
Qualcomm's move reflects a wider trend in technology. After years of aggressive hiring, many companies are trimming staff to finance AI ambitions; Meta, for example, has announced plans to cut 8,000 jobs to fund AI infrastructure. At the same time, competition for process engineers, chip designers, and AI software developers remains intense. McKinsey and the SEMI Foundation estimate the United States could face a shortage of as many as 157,000 semiconductor workers by 2030, and 73% of chip companies report difficulty filling engineering roles.
