Solid-state memory chip company Solidigm is already adding employees to its former Intel Corp. workforce that will take office space in Rancho Cordova in the new year.
Solidigm is a new company created in December when South Korean memory chip maker SK hynix Inc. bought Intel's flash memory business.
Locally, about 800 former Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) employees are part of the Solidigm team, said Catherine Roberts, spokeswoman with Solidigm.
The majority of the former Intel employees have been working remotely since the deal was announced, but Solidigm has some employees in Intel offices it has been leasing, she said.
By the time Solidigm’s offices are ready this winter, the company will have 1,000 employees in Rancho Cordova, she said. The company’s five-year plan is to get to 1,900 employees in Rancho Cordova.
Meanwhile, Intel currently has approximately 5,400 employees at its Folsom campus, said Katelynn Loughrin, communications and media manager with Intel.
That figure is 100 more than when the Solidigm deal was announced, and she said the company is hiring for more than 200 positions.
Intel currently has 210 positions open, for which Folsom is a location option, according to the job board on Intel’s website.
Even as Intel is hiring, there is speculation that it could also be on the verge of considering layoffs amid decreasing demand for chips and personal computers.
News service Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources, reported Tuesday that Intel is planning significant workforce reductions that could affect the sales and marketing division. Intel could announce the move during the company’s next earnings release, according to Bloomberg. Intel is scheduled to report third-quarter earnings Oct. 27.
It's not unusual for the Folsom Intel campus to have different hiring dynamics from the rest of the company. A couple years ago, Intel Folsom was hiring 70 positions at the same time the company was laying off 128 in Santa Clara.
Solidigm is currently working on tenant improvements to the 230,000-square-foot Rancho Cordova campus and is targeting a move-in date in the first quarter of 2023. It's moving into three buildings in the White Rock Corporate Campus.
Solidigm has nearly 2,000 employees in 20 locations around the world. The Rancho Cordova location would be strictly research and development, lab and administrative work. It would not be a chip fabrication operation. The Rancho Cordova Solidigm location will include engineering, sales, marketing, communications, human resources, operations and finance, among other departments, Loughrin said.
Intel’s employee count has been over 6,000 in Folsom as recently as two years ago. It's currently the largest tech employer in the region. The Folsom intel campus has been open since 1983, and it now includes 1.5 million square feet of office, test floor and lab space. It's one of the Santa Clara-based company’s largest office sites. No large-scale manufacturing occurs in Folsom. Rather, it is a research and development office.
