Qualcomm Begins Layoffs in India, Cutting Over 1,000 Jobs

Qualcomm has begun laying off employees in India, with more than 1,000 jobs at risk across its Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Delhi NCR, and Chennai offices. The U.S. chipmaker has not officially confirmed the number of India positions being eliminated, but notifications to affected employees began this week,.¹

CEO Cristiano Amon described the cuts in an October internal memo as a "performance‑focused reduction" following annual employee reviews, with the goal of building "a stronger performance culture" in areas where the company has "consistently fallen short of expectations,",¹ which reviewed the memo. Notifications were expected to start in November — and they have.

Cuts appear to span organizational levels and affect both senior engineers and recent hires. Posts on Reddit's r/qualcomm community described separations in Bengaluru and Hyderabad on November 11, with some users claiming employees with good performance ratings were also affected.

Severance details emerged from affected employees posting online. According to a user on the Qualcomm subreddit cited by,² the severance formula is:

3 months' base salary + 1 month per year of service + 1 extra month if the employee signs and submits layoff papers within 2‑3 days. For an employee with 2 years of service, that works out to 6 months of salary.

The manager cited "business needs" rather than individual performance as the reason for the layoff, according to the Reddit post. A senior staff member attributed the selection to AI‑driven cost‑cutting and the employee's relatively low experience compared to peers.

Qualcomm's financials tell the story. Fiscal 2026 revenue dropped 3% year‑on‑year to $43.12 billion, with Q4 revenue down 8% to $10.32 billion. Non‑GAAP net income fell 15% to $11.31 billion,.¹

The biggest pain point: smartphone chip revenue declined 25% in the latest quarter,.² Qualcomm is pivoting toward data centers, AI, and connected devices — areas where the talent mix and cost structure are different from its traditional mobile chip business.

Analyst Pareekh Jain told ¹ that the cuts are "not necessarily performance‑based" — the company is seeking to reduce global headcount and align costs with business performance as it shifts focus.

Qualcomm is far from alone. More than 142,000 tech roles have been eliminated across 350 companies in 2026, per Layoffs.fyi. Recent high‑profile cuts include Canva (1,271 jobs), Block's second round of 2026 layoffs ($5,000 severance top‑up), and voluntary separation packages at Microsoft, Google, and Meta.

The India tech sector has been hit particularly hard. India accounted for roughly 36% of Qualcomm's workforce in 2023 — and is a major engineering hub for the company's R&D, chip design, and software development. Cuts in Bengaluru and Hyderabad affect the talent pipeline for embedded systems, RF engineering, and wireless technologies.

For engineers in the semiconductor industry, Qualcomm's layoffs signal that even the chip sector — which has benefited enormously from AI demand — is restructuring. The company isn't shrinking because business is collapsing; it's shrinking because the business is shifting from smartphones to AI infrastructure and connected devices.

One data point from CTech suggests the cuts may include teams working on radio frequency, Bluetooth, Wi‑Fi, and satellite communications — traditional Qualcomm strongholds. That's a signal about where the company sees declining returns versus growth opportunities.

India remains a critical location for Qualcomm's sales, administrative, and R&D operations alongside the U.S. and China. But the company is clearly tightening — and for chip engineers, the message is that expertise in AI‑adjacent fields (data center silicon, edge AI, automotive) is becoming more valuable than traditional mobile chip design.