Chip Startup SiFive Lays Off 20% of Staff Amid Strategic Refocus

SiFive, a key player in RISC-V chip design, moves away from ready-made designs to focus on custom solutions for clients; its CEO and co-founders continue to lead despite massive layoffs.

SiFive, a RISC-V chip design company, has laid off around 20% of its workforce, approximately 130 people, across all its departments including executives, in order to refocus on creating custom processor cores for its clients.
Amid its strategic refocus, the firm intends to move away from its ready-made designs to operate entirely as a design shop, meeting specific customer needs.
Despite the layoffs, CEO Patrick Little and the three co-founders continue to run the company, while its long-term plans remain unchanged.
SiFive was valued at nearly $2.5 billion in 2022 and is reported to be well-funded for the future, with its chips being used in areas such as artificial intelligence, automotive, consumer gadgets, and low-power devices.
Even as it lays off staff, SiFive products were still announced this month, such as the Performance P870, a 64-bit out-of-order superscalar core design, and the Intelligence X390, a processor aimed at accelerating workloads like machine learning.