When Intel released its latest quarterly earnings in early August, CEO Pat Gelsinger said the tech giant would cut costs and broadly restructure following the gloomy quarter.
As part of the cost-reduction plan he outlined, Intel will slash 15% of its headcount by the end of the year, according to an Aug. 1 press release.
Still, state officials and business leaders haven't sounded any alarm bells yet on the tech giant’s progress to build a $20 billion site to fabricate semiconductors in central Ohio. Ohio Chamber of Commerce senior lobbyist Rick Carfagna said he has faith the long-term need for the tiny computer chips will outweigh the chipmaker's woes.
“When I commute to work and I travel our freeways and when I see all of the mega loads ... There is steel going into the ground,” Carfagna said in an interview. “Things are underway. I have no qualms whatsoever that these fabs will be, are being constructed and will be constructed on time.”
In February, a spokesperson for Intel said it wouldn't meet its “aggressive” project finish date to be online by 2025. She declined to pinpoint a date then but said construction could continue through 2027—which would be five years after the groundbreaking—based on prior project timelines.
The state has already doled out $600 million in onshoring grants to the tech giant for its Ohio plants. Dan Tierney, a spokesperson for Gov. Mike DeWine, said in February that delays in projects this size and scale were not abnormal. Ohio would only claw back incentives, Tierney said then, if Intel pulled the plug all together.
Intel is under contract with the state to deliver on its job creation and investment commitments to the state by 2028.
It was also awarded money from the federal government through the CHIPS and Science Act for various projects nationwide, including those in Arizona and Ohio.
