Intel confirmed today that "less than 1%" of its global workforce had been laid off as the chipmaker refocuses on growth opportunities in 2020. The news comes in stark contrast to Intel's earnings which reached record levels last month.

"Changes in our workforce are driven by the priorities of our business, which we continually evaluate. As we move into 2020, our business units are focusing their resources on areas where we have the greatest opportunity for growth and, as part of that, some are planning to eliminate roles associated with projects that are no longer priorities," a company spokesperson wrote in an email to SDxCentral.

The layoffs first came to light after a notice was filed in late January with California's Employment Development Department that detailed Intel's plans to permanently cut 128 positions.

However, the actual number of Intel employees affected is likely much higher. With approximately 110,000 workers around the globe, "less than 1%" adds up to somewhere shy of 1,100 people out of work.

Intel claims that at least some of these workers will be reassigned. "Wherever possible, we’ve transitioned employees or teams within the company to areas of business need, and we expect this to impact less than 1% of our global workforce, subject to local requirements," the spokesperson wrote.

The spokesperson added that the company has more than 1,300 open positions in locations throughout the United States and around the world.

While Intel finished off 2019 on a high note posting $20.2 billion in revenue during the fourth quarter and exceeding expectations by more than $1 billion, most of this was driven by strong performance in the company's Data Center Group (DCG).

According to CEO Bob Swan on last month's earnings call, the DCG now accounts for more than 50% of the company's revenues each quarter.

And while still the heavyweight in the data-center chip market, Intel has seen increased competition not just from rivals like AMD and IBM, but from the hyperscale cloud providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), which has been developing its own data center chips too.

Earlier this week Google Cloud announced the addition of AMD's second-generation EPYC processors to its virtual machine hosting options.

Intel has also faced roadblocks in the development of its neural networking processors, which ultimately led to the purchase of Habana Labs in December 2019. Less than seven weeks later the company announced it would end support for its homegrown Nervana AI chips and focus its efforts on the processors and technology acquired via Habana Labs going forward.