Qualcomm Lays Off 269 Employees, Mostly in Data Center Business

Qualcomm is laying off 269 employees at its offices in Raleigh, N.C. and San Diego, mostly in its faltering data center unit, according to documents reviewed by The Information. Only around 50 employees remain in the data center unit, down from nearly 1,000 employees earlier this year, said one person with knowledge of the situation.

The layoffs follow earlier rounds of staff cutbacks in the unit earlier this year, as the mobile chip giant pulled back on its investment in the sector. Qualcomm had spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to break into Intel’s most profitable business of selling chips for servers running in data centers. Intel has nearly complete dominance over the sector. While Qualcomm made progress in finding potential customers, the cost of keeping the group running was high.