ST details plan to cut 2,800 jobs, revamp manufacturing

Business news | April 14, 2025

By Peter Clarke

Europe Semiconductors

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Some 2,800 jobs are to go under a plan European chip giant STMicroelectronics NV has announced to reshape its manufacturing footprint and resize the global cost base.

The announcement is not a surprise as reports in February had said that ST was looking to cut between 2,000 and 3,000 staff out of a total workforce of about 50,000 to address a slump in the industrial and automotive chip markets it serves.

ST looks to cut up to 6% of staff, says report

ST has now confirmed the job loss target and said automation and artificial intelligence will be used to gain increased efficiency to help advanced manufacturing in Europe. Elsewhere ST has spoken about such initiatives as ‘China for China’ where it plans to use foundries to supply its chips into local markets.

ST said it expects to cut 2,800 jobs on a voluntary basis, on top of normal attrition, over the next three years. Most of the job cuts are expected to take place in 2026 and 2027, the company said.

ST said that the plan and a focusing of manufacturing would target annual cost savings in the high triple-digit million-dollar range by 2028. The outline of the program was first mentioned, but without details, back in October 2024.

CEO Jean-Marc Chery said in a statement: “The reshaping of our manufacturing footprint announced today will future proof our Integrated Device Manufacturer [IDM] model with strategic assets in Europe and improve our ability to innovate even faster, benefitting all our stakeholders. As we focus on advanced manufacturing infrastructure and mainstream technologies, we will continue to leverage all of our existing sites and bring redefined missions for some of them to support their long-term success. We are committed to managing this program responsibly, according to our long-established values, and exclusively through voluntary measures. The technology R&D, design, and high-volume manufacturing activities in Italy and France will continue to be central to our global operations and will be reinforced via planned investments in mainstream technologies.”

Objectives

ST said it wants to achieve two objectives for its manufacturing operations:

to prepare for future 300mm silicon and 200mm silicon carbide wafer fabs to enable them to reach a critical scale
to maximize the productivity and efficiency of 150mm and mature 200mm capabilities.

The result would see ST’s manufacturing footprint focus on digital in France, on analog and power in Italy and on mature processes in Singapore, the company said. As a result, each of ST’s current sites will continue to have a long-term role, the company added.

ST did not indicate that the previously planned joint venture with GlobalFoundries to build a 300mm wafer fab at Crolles, France, would take place. “The plan (for Crolles) is to increase capacity to 14,000 wafer starts per week by 2027 with planned modular expansions increasing capacity up to 20,000 wafer starts per week, depending on market conditions,” the company said.

Crolles 200mm wafer fab will be converted to perform wafer sorting and advanced packaging including such technologies as optical sensing and silicon photonics. This will allow mature manufacturing to be transferred to the 200mm wafer fab in Rousset, France.

The Tours wafer fab will continue to perform some specialized manufacturing on 200mm-diameter wafers and remain a center of competence for gallium nitride but will also take on panel-level packaging, a major enabler of chiplet-based component production.