Samsung axes 1,000 US jobs to consolidate near Texas chip hub
Samsung is cutting over 1,000 consumer-electronics roles and relocating its US headquarters to Texas, exposing a widening profit gap between its booming semiconductor division and its struggling phone business.
Samsung Electronics America will cut 739 jobs at its New Jersey headquarters just a year after opening the site, according to a state filing. The company is relocating its US consumer operations to Texas by the end of 2026, a shift that will also eliminate roughly 100 roles at a Plano campus and 179 at a logistics unit in Ridgefield Park.
The Englewood Cliffs glass campus opened in September 2025 to replace a facility the company had occupied since 1992. Samsung frames the cuts as a geographic reorganisation rather than a downturn, noting a majority of the affected staff received relocation offers. “This process may lead to changes in our workforce structure, such as employees who are unable to relocate,” the company said, adding the move aims to foster “stronger collaboration and optimise the organisation.” For the 62% of the New Jersey workforce affected, however, the outcome is identical to a layoff if they cannot move.
The relocation pulls Samsung’s consumer divisions physically closer to the state where it has poured billions into semiconductor manufacturing. It is a geographic acknowledgment of where the company’s actual growth is originating.
Samsung posted a record group operating profit of roughly 89 trillion won in the second quarter, a near 19-fold increase driven by surging demand for high-bandwidth memory chips used in artificial intelligence data centres. That semiconductor boom pushed Samsung’s market value past $1 trillion earlier this year.
The consumer unit selling Galaxy phones, televisions and home appliances has not shared in that windfall. Squeezed by softer smartphone sales and the rising cost of the memory chips its sibling division produces at a premium, the division faces tightening margins and fierce competition from Apple.
For European investors and tech executives, the restructuring underscores a widening bifurcation across the global hardware sector. The artificial intelligence infrastructure build-out is generating historic profits for component suppliers, while traditional consumer businesses are being actively downsized. Using headcount reductions to reallocate resources away from phones and appliances toward chip capacity has become the standard lever for the industry’s largest players.
