The move comes as the chip giant cuts 12,000 jobs from its global workforce.
Intel is scaling back in Washington state as the Santa Clara, Calif., semiconductor giant prepares to cut 12,000 jobs from its global workforce.
Intel is closing its facility in DuPont, Pierce County, the city’s mayor has confirmed, one of several sites the company has in the Puget Sound area.
Intel now employs about 350 people in DuPont, said Mayor Mike Courts. He said he does not have an exact timeline of when the office will close.
The company cut back its presence in the city south of Tacoma in 2013, when it moved 350 employees from the site. Some employees shifted to the company’s sites in Oregon. It is not clear if that will be the case this time.
Intel was the first big company to set up an office in DuPont, where Amazon.com now has a large warehouse.
The Oregonian newspaper first reported the closure of the DuPont office, also saying the company would close its Bellevue facility. Later, however, it said the Bellevue office, near the Microsoft campus, was not closing. About 220 people work at that site.
Employees at the Bellevue office said Monday that they had not heard anything about layoffs there.
An Intel spokesman declined to comment on the closures, referring to CEO Brian Krzanich’s email to employees last week, which announced the major workforce cuts.
“We are not providing site-specific information at this time,” spokesman William Moss said in an email.
Intel also has a 190-employee office in the Union Station building in Seattle’s Chinatown International District. Employees at the office declined to comment Monday, referring questions to Intel’s corporate team.
A source said there had been discussion that Intel might close the Union Station office, but employees don’t know the outcome.
Intel’s move will certainly hurt workers in DuPont, said city administrator Ted Danek, but it won’t be fatal to the city’s economy.
“It’s never good for a city to lose a company like Intel,” Danek said. “Having said that … we have other businesses in the building, and I imagine when Intel leaves, other businesses will move in.”
A few companies already have shown interest in the site, Danek said.
Intel had big plans for its DuPont office when it was first announced in 1995 — plans that never came to fruition. The company secured tax breaks from both the state and the city of DuPont to save between $150,000 and $412,000 per year in setting up an office site that could house between 6,000 and 7,900 employees.
The state of Washington poured $500,000 into DuPont’s water system to accommodate the influx of employees. But Intel’s office never grew that large. When cuts hit the DuPont office in 2013, the total employee count was 690 people.
Intel’s website says it now employs 1,000 people in Washington state, though that number may be out of date. The number appears to be closer to 760 at sites in DuPont, Seattle and Bellevue.
Intel employees in the state work in engineering and product development, according to the website.