Susana Schwartz
Are we in an AI-driven era of 'fire-to-hire', which will balance out over time, or are we in a correction of pandemic-era overhiring that won't be reversed?
“Without intervention, it’s hard to imagine that there won’t be some significant job impact there. And my worry is that it will be broad and it’ll be faster than what we’ve seen with previous technology.” – Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic on 60 Minutes, November 16, 2025
The top story in my top-3 below, of which chip-design company Synopsys is just a part, is the layoff of 2,000 employees, which adds to a broader wave of job cuts in the tech industry. It’s a trend that has left some observers concerned, and others cautiously optimistic that it will be reversed with a hiring boom around specialized AI and data science talent. Below, I show some of the 2025 layoffs, which tech leaders in large part attribute to strategic shifts toward AI development and infrastructure — something they say is crucial to their long-term growth and competitiveness.
Here’s a brief rundown of some of the layoffs in 2025, though the numbers are constantly changing:
Intel: 24,000-25,000 (planned for 2025)
Tata Consulting: 12,000 (planned for 2025-2026)
Microsoft: 15,000 (ongoing)
Amazon: 14,000
TCS: 12,000
Accenture: 11,000
Panasonic: 10,000
IBM: 9,000
Google: Unspecified, but hundreds across locations for 2025 (following 12,000 cut in 2023)
Salesforce: 5,000
STM Micro: 5,000
Cisco: 4,250
Meta: 4,200
Synopsys: 2,000
Oracle: Unspecified, but hundreds across locations
xAI: Unspecified, but hundreds across locations
Rivian: Unspecified, but hundreds across locations
Susana Schwartz
Technology Editor
RCRTech
AI Infrastructure Top Stories
Synopsys layoffs — a harbinger of a new era in semiconductor design?: Semiconductor company Synopsys is restructuring, following its $35 billion cash-and-stock M&A of engineering simulation company Ansys. The company will lay off 10% of its workforce, approximately 2,000 employees to consolidate operations and streamline teams.
Lessons to learn from China Mobile International: China’s operator-led model has reshaped private 5G adoption across global supply chains, with about 64,000 private 5G networks that offer network slicing, hybrid or mixed private 5G setups. Sam Bao, deputy head and director of technical services for CMI said that contrary to assumptions in Europe or North America, a hybrid-style operator approach can scale internationally. Read more here about how operators can “steer the play.”
Omdia talks RAN and O-RAN: AI-driven and cloud-native architectures are accelerating RAN transformation across APAC, yet full-scale Open RAN (O-RAN) adoption remains limited outside Japan, according to Rémy Pascal, Omdia’s lead RAN analyst. He spoke to RCR Wireless News about the global RAN market, which in Q3 posted revenues of nearly $8 billion — a figure that counts hardware and software, but excludes all services. See why Japan leads in open vRAN deployments, and which companies are leading in the global RAN market.
AI-Powered Telecom Infrastructure
Supermicro, in collaboration with NVIDIA, delivers AI-powered infrastructure tailored for telcos, enhancing operational efficiency, network management, and customer experiences. Explore now
AI Today: What You Need to Know
Arm-Nvidia deepen their partnership: Arm’s Neoverse platform will integrate Nvidia VNLink Fusion for quicker integration, faster time to market, higher-bandwidth accelerated compute, and greater flexibility for ecosystem partners building next-gen AI systems.
RIKEN focus on quantum and AI: RIKEN has announced it has integrated NVIDIA’s GB200 NVL4 systems into two new supercomputers designed for AI research and quantum computing. The AI-focused system uses 1,600 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, while the quantum-oriented system uses 540 GPUs. Both connect through NVIDIA Quantum-X800 InfiniBand.
University of Texas surpasses 5,000 GPUs: The University of Texas has claimed to have the most AI computing power in academia, with more than 5,000 advanced NVIDIA GPUs furthering its focus on open-source AI for research in the “public interest” areas of health care, drug development, materials and national security.
UConn embraces AI and quantum: During its Economics Forum, UConn has emphasized the importance of educating workers with AI and quantum technology skills — important to prominent sectors in Connecticut, including health care and finance, where AI and quantum are making substantial progress.
nVent’s new liquid cooling and power portfolio: nVent Electric has announced new, modular data center liquid cooling solutions, including enhanced coolant distribution units with new row and rack-based CDUs, alongside advanced technology cooling system manifolds. They also include updated racks based on leading reference designs and a new services program.
Corintis pioneering “microfluidics”: Rack densities have evolved from 6 kW per rack to 270 kW, and soon to 480 kW. With megawatt racks on the horizon, Corintis is pioneering Microfluidics that are 3x faster than traditional cooling, channeling water or other cooling liquid directly to specific parts of a chip.
