Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan sent a memo to employees Thursday informing them of significant ongoing layoffs and other cost-cutting measures. The company has struggled to maintain a competitive edge amid ongoing financial losses and strategic setbacks in the AI and semiconductor markets.

“There are no more blank checks,” Tan wrote in a memo to employees, published by Reuters. “Every investment must make economic sense. We will build what our customers need, when they need it, and earn their trust through consistent execution.”

The memo directly addresses …

• A reduction of about 15% (over 25,000 jobs) via layoffs and attrition
• Operational streamlining to “drive greater efficiency and increase accountability at every level”
• Cancellation of new factory projects in Germany and Poland, and a slowdown in Ohio facility construction, adjusting spending to actual market demand
• Relocation of manufacturing operations from Costa Rica to Asia, while maintaining select engineering functions in Costa Rica

“We are making hard but necessary decisions to streamline the organization, drive greater efficiency, and increase accountability at every level of the company,” wrote the CEO, who took over in March.

Intel’s stock jumped early in 2025 as optimism built around new leadership, but shares fell over 9% after Thursday’s Q2 earnings and layoff announcement, threatening to erase most yearly gains.

Intel has lost ground to Nvidia in the AI sector and to AMD in the traditional computing market. Unlike other Silicon Valley giants, it doesn’t have booming AI or cloud businesses to offset its losses.

Microsoft, IBM, and Google have also shed thousands of workers this year. CEOs, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, have said they are cutting staff to streamline operations and free up capital to invest billions in AI.

For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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• The American new home market is cooling, with softer sales, higher inventory, and falling prices reflecting the current slowdown.

The latest New Residential Sales report (June 2025) from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that the U.S. housing market is experiencing a slowdown in new single-family home sales, while inventory and supply have increased, and prices are declining.

As buyers balk at high home prices and mortgage rates that continue to approach 7%, a recent Oxford Economics report predicts more pain ahead. Concerns about the economy and job security mean many would-be new purchasers are opting to make do with modest home improvements instead.

Increased new home sales often indicate strong consumer confidence, greater employment, and accessible financing. Conversely, declines suggest waning buyer interest, affordability issues, or economic stress.

“There’s no question that in many of pockets of the Sun Belt—the epicenter of U.S. single-family homebuilding—buyers have gained a considerable amount of leverage this year and the market has softened,” ResiClub editor-in-chief Lance Lambert told Fortune Intelligence.

“In order to keep sales volumes steady, big homebuilders have compressed margins further and done bigger incentives or outright price cuts. Lennar is spending the equivalent of 13.3% of final sales price on incentive, like mortgage rate buydowns,” Lambert noted, up from 1.5% at the height of the Pandemic Housing Boom in the second quarter of 2022. In normal times, Lambert pointed out, Lennar spends 5% to 6% on buyer sales incentives. (Lennar is ranked no. 129 on the Fortune 500.)

Key points from the report:

• New home sales: Sales were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 627,000 in June 2025. This is only 0.6% higher than May 2025, but 6.6% lower than June 2024, indicating a notable year-over-year decline in buying activity.
• Inventory: At the end of June, there were 511,000 new houses for sale, a 1.2% increase from May 2025 and an 8.5% increase from June 2024. This rise in inventory suggests that homes are staying on the market longer.
• Months’ supply: The supply of homes relative to the sales rate is now at 9.8 months, up from 9.7 months in May 2025 and 8.4 months in June 2024. A higher months’ supply figure generally indicates a slower market with more supply than demand.
• Prices: The median sales price for new homes in June 2025 was $401,800, which is 4.9% lower than May 2025 and 2.9% lower than June 2024. The average sales price was $501,000, down from the previous month but slightly higher than a year ago. This points to downward pressure on prices, likely due to rising inventory and decreased demand.

What it means:

• The combination of dropping sales, rising inventory, and declining prices indicates a market with weaker demand and increased supply.
• These conditions are often seen when buyers are constrained (e.g., by high mortgage rates or economic uncertainty), or homebuilders have ramped up production in anticipation of higher demand that didn’t fully materialize.
• The elevated months’ supply metric—at almost 10 months—suggests a buyer’s market, where purchasers have more negotiating power and sellers may need to lower prices to attract buyers.

A new home is defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as a single-family house that is being sold for the first time. Since new home sales are recorded early in the sales process, trends in new home sales can signal coming shifts in the broader housing market, forecasting changes before they appear in existing home sales data.

For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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