Intel has anchored Oregon’s Silicon Forest for decades, but deep layoffs and years of turbulence have raised questions about its long-term stability.

PORTLAND, Ore. — Intel remains Oregon’s largest private employer, even after deep layoffs and years of turbulence. Now, the company is asking the public to trust that its next phase of chipmaking leadership will once again pay off for the state.

For decades, Intel has been the backbone of Oregon’s Silicon Forest, with sprawling campuses in Hillsboro driving research, development and advanced chip manufacturing. But in recent years, restructuring and roughly 6,000 job cuts have raised questions about the company’s long-term stability and its ripple effects across the state’s economy.

In an interview on Straight Talk, Courtney Martin, Intel’s director of U.S. government and community affairs, discussed the company’s outlook, what the federal government’s new 10% stake in the company means, Nvidia’s $5 billion investment — and what that all means for Oregonians.

In the following excerpt, Martin talks about layoffs at Intel and the company’s role in Oregon’s economy. The transcript has been edited for clarity. This interview was recorded on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026.

Stephanie Domurat: Oregonians have seen painful mass layoffs in the last couple of years. Six thousand jobs have been cut. With these new investments, do you anticipate either that more people will be brought on or that those cuts have at least stopped? 

Courtney Martin: Yeah, we’ve had to make a lot of decisions over the past couple of years as part of our really global efforts to become a leaner and more efficient company and kind of build the workforce model that we need for the future. I will say that I’m very thankful for our partners here in Oregon at the state we worked with the city, with the county, with work systems on several efforts to provide additional services to folks that are impacted. They want to stay here. There’s a robust ecosystem and it’s been great to see some of that outreach and we’re really thankful for that.

I think we’ll continue to see some changes in different business units as we continue to refine our model, but at this time there’s no major changes ahead of us and so we’re really just focused again on building that best technology and demonstrating our value proposition to our foundry customers.

Domurat: As Intel aims to lead in innovation and advanced manufacturing, how is the company attracting and retaining talent, including homegrown Oregonians or people from the U.S.?

Martin: Yeah, so as I mentioned earlier, we’ve continued partnerships with local universities and colleges. Oregon State, Portland State are two of the top universities that we’ve historically recruited from. Portland Community College has for decades been an amazing source of talent on our technician side, and the partnerships we have with them have held strong, and we continue to invest in. 

A lot of what we do is internal and I think about why I come to work every day and tell this story and wanna make sure people know is how important this company. The stakes are high globally. The stakes are high for the country. The stakes are certainly high for Intel, and we definitely acknowledge that and have had to make a lot of tough decisions — and the stakes are high for Oregon. We’re such obviously a huge part of the economy here. We’re by far continue to be the state’s largest private employer.

We’re appreciative of the work the state did over the years around the Oregon CHIPS program, and it’s just important that we continue to recognize how competitive this environment is. How other states are trying to build their own semiconductor ecosystems, and really the gem that we have here both at Intel in terms of our R&D and the broader ecosystem that surround us.