Qualcomm plans to cut jobs around the world after its yearly staff reviews, with affected employees due to be told from November.
Chief executive Cristiano Amon set out the plan to staff on Monday, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters. The memo calls the move a “performance-focused reduction” but gives no number of jobs.
Reuters could not establish the scale, and we could not independently review the memo. Moreover, Qualcomm did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
Amon wrote that the cuts aim to build “a stronger performance culture” and to deal with staff who have “consistently fallen short of expectations”.
Managers will weigh business priorities, the company’s needs, and each person’s skills and expertise, he added.
“As we have expanded the business, so have the competencies and skills we require,” Amon wrote, according to Reuters.
Qualcomm had about 52,000 employees worldwide at the end of its 2025 financial year, according to its annual report.
The chipmaker has had a weak year on the stock market. Its shares are up about 1.5% in 2026, while the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index has gained nearly 60%. Rising memory chip prices have also driven up the cost of phones and other devices, hurting demand.
In July, Qualcomm forecast quarterly profit below analysts’ estimates and said its revenue from Apple would fall faster than it had expected.
To fill that gap, the company is moving into new markets, including AI chips for data centres. It expects most of its chip sales in the 2027 financial year to come from products other than smartphones. It is also aiming for $5bn in data centre revenue that year.
The memo follows smaller cuts earlier in 2026. In April, Qualcomm filed state notices covering about 105 jobs in San Diego, according to California layoff data compiled by LayoffNext. It also booked $97m in restructuring charges, mostly for severance, in the first nine months of its financial year.
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