Qualcomm has told employees it will cut jobs worldwide after its annual performance reviews, and it expects to begin informing affected employees in November. According to a Reuters report, CEO Cristiano Amon framed the move as a “performance-focused reduction” intended to build a “stronger performance culture,” stating that the company will consider organizational needs, business priorities, and employees’ skills and expertise when determining affected positions.

“The reduction will address employees who have consistently fallen short of expectations,” said Amon. The memo did not specify which departments would be affected or how many jobs would be cut. The company had roughly 52,000 employees at the end of its 2025 fiscal year, typically in late September.

Qualcomm, one of the world’s largest smartphone chip manufacturers with customers including Apple, Xiaomi, and Samsung, has been hit by an industry-wide decline in consumer electronics sales as rising memory costs reduce demand. Its shares have risen just 1.5% in 2026, compared to gains of almost 60% for the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index.

As a result, Qualcomm is strategically pivoting to AI infrastructure and edge computing, following a broadening trend across the semiconductor industry. The company unveiled its AI200 and AI250 AI inference accelerators in October 2025. After its latest earnings report projected lower quarterly profits than initially estimated, the company said that growth in its data center business would offset any lost revenue by fiscal year 2027.

Qualcomm’s layoff decision comes as it tries to position itself for future growth. While mobile chips remain its core business, its best future opportunities might lie in data center silicon, automotive platforms, personal computing, and edge computing, and all those fields require specialized engineering talent. A performance-based reduction could let the company retain its most valuable employees in those fields while cutting duplicated roles, lower-performing teams, and positions that no longer fit its strategy.

"As we have expanded the business, so have the competencies ⁠and skills ​we require," Amon wrote. "We must have the right ​people in the right roles so they can perform at their best and the company can continue ​to succeed." The move comes on the back of Q3 2026 financial results that included a 4% year-on-year decline in revenue and 25% lower net income. The core handset business recorded a 20% decline in revenue on the year, too. The company reportedly recorded $97 million in severance-related restructuring charges in the first nine months of its fiscal year.

Qualcomm’s move is part of a larger industry transition, largely driven by AI. After several years of aggressive hiring, many tech companies are now trimming their workforce to fund AI ambitions. Meta announced plans to cut 8,000 jobs to fund AI infrastructure. Even as companies are cutting jobs that don’t fit their AI roadmap, they're fiercely competing for process engineers, chip designers, and AI software developers. McKinsey and the SEMI Foundation estimate that the United States could face a shortage of up to 157,000 semiconductor workers by 2030, while 73% of chip companies report difficulty filling engineering roles.

The current and expected power draw of AI data centers has been the subject of strong discussion, but today, there appears to be some good news. Three U.S. nuclear reactors are being restarted after many years offline, expected to bring 2.25 GW total to the grid. According to a report, the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan, the Crane Clean Energy Center on Three Mile Island (Pennsylvania), and the Duane Arnold Energy Center in Iowa are getting a fresh set of proverbial tires to get rolling again.

The Palisades plant was under active decommissioning, apparently marking this event as the first time a nuclear reactor is being put back to work after dismantling had begun. Despite what sounds like a tough starting point, this plant is the one that's furthest along, as it was loading fuel in August 2026 and is expected to generate 800 MW around March 2027.

Much like the other projects mentioned here, the Holtec Palisades firm running the reactor took a loan from the U.S. Department of Energy. Palisades borrowed from the DoE under the Biden administration's 2024 investment in nuclear energy, while the others were issued under the purview of the Trump administration's 2025 push.

The second reactor is the Crane Clean Energy Center on Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island, repurposing the facility's Unit 1. The project started in 2024, with Constellation Energy saying it would spend $1.6 billion total for the reactor. The firm then took a $1 billion loan from the Department of Energy in 2025. Microsoft is set to be the main customer, with a 20-year contract. This facility is projected to bring 835 MW online sometime in 2027.

This facility was famous in 1979 for the partial meltdown of its Unit 2, although mercifully the event had relatively tame environmental consequences. Constellation's ongoing project is restoring and refurbishing Unit 1, which didn't show significant issues until its 2019 decommissioning and has undergone a safety inspection from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This entity still needs to grant its blessing before the reactor starts loading fuel.

The Duane Arnold Energy Center in Iowa is the third unit being brought back to the grid, in a collaboration between NextEra Energy and Google. The predicted output is 615 MW, with the juice expected to start flowing in 2029. Next Energy CEO John Ketchum stated that the firm was happy with its cooperation contract with Google, as it meant that "none of the costs are being paid by residential customers in Iowa."

All three facilities had previously been shut down at various points as they were deemed too expensive to run, as labor and maintenance costs made nuclear-generated watts pricier than alternative means of production.

But the financial landscape for power has shifted, plus with such overwhelming demand and grid connections being a primary blocker for data center buildouts, their operators are likely willing to pay for premium power as long as they get it now instead of in a few decades.

Some quick browsing indicates that Michigan is going to need somewhere between 1.2 and 2.3 GW for data centers alone around 2030. Pennsylvania's forecast has a wide range of 0.8 to 3.4 GW, while Iowa's range is 1.55 to 2.8 GW. These figures are loose, as they include planned capacity for data center projects that may or may not end up being built, and whose timetables may slip due to economic conditions, hardware availability, and public resistance against expansive buildouts.