Samsung's 739 New Jersey Cuts Are Mostly a Texas Relocation, and Its Chip Business Just Hit Record Profit

A Reuters exclusive lands Sunday with 739 Englewood Cliffs roles affected and about 100 Plano mobile jobs actually cut, the headquarters move framed as relocation rather than layoff while Samsung's semiconductor division rides AI demand to record profit; NetApp's 77 San Jose WARN took effect Saturday for a May filing, Coursera's post-Udemy merger cuts landed July 6, and the immersive-sim studio OtherSide lost 35 people in two weeks.

July 2026 so far (through July 19), newly announced cuts with disclosed numbers: roughly 13,000 confirmed layoffs across 23 companies, including about 100 confirmed Samsung cuts in Plano, Texas. Separately, 739 Samsung positions in New Jersey are affected by a headquarters move that Samsung says are mostly relocations rather than layoffs. The tally excludes undisclosed cuts (Fliggy, Coursera, Polygon Labs) and WARN-effective-only filings (NetApp).

Samsung Electronics America: 739 New Jersey roles affected, about 100 Plano jobs cut

A Reuters exclusive published Sunday (carried by CNA and Times of India) put the first real numbers on a restructuring that had been telegraphed since June. Samsung Electronics America (SEA), the consumer-electronics arm that sells and markets Samsung's phones, TVs, displays and appliances in the US, told Reuters that 739 roles at its Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, office have been affected by plans to move the unit's headquarters to Plano, Texas, by the end of 2026.

The number deserves the same asterisk Verizon's "3,000 layoffs" got last week. Samsung says a majority of the 739 have received relocation offers to Texas, and that the changes "should not be viewed as a mass lay-off." The confirmed actual layoffs are smaller: at SEA's Plano office, about 100 workers, including staff in the mobile division, have been let go, per a person who told Reuters they were among those laid off. Reuters reviewed LinkedIn posts from more than 30 senior sales and marketing employees across Texas, New Jersey and other US locations who said they had been laid off or exited over the past two weeks. The precise split between relocations and true layoffs was not disclosed.

Internal documents reviewed by Reuters show SEA notified some employees on June 30 of an "enterprise-wide reduction-in-force" warning of a "significant number of impacts." The headquarters move itself was announced June 1 (NJ.com, Yonhap), and is a striking one: SEA held a grand opening at its new Englewood Cliffs campus in September 2025, less than a year before announcing the exit. SEA employs about 1,200 people in New Jersey, meaning more than 60% of that office is affected. Samsung had 11,770 US employees at the end of 2025, including its semiconductor division.

Stated reason vs. real mechanism. Samsung frames the move as a way to "foster stronger collaboration and optimize the organization by bringing more teams together within a growing technology and AI ecosystem," near its Austin and Taylor, Texas, chip factories. The real mechanism is a headquarters relocation to a lower-cost, business-friendly state (Tesla, Oracle and others have made the same Texas move), layered on a consumer-electronics business under pressure. Reuters leads on the contrast inside Samsung itself: the semiconductor division is skyrocketing to record profit on AI-driven chip demand, while the consumer-electronics units languish as component costs surge. This is not an AI-substitution layoff. AI is the reason the chip side is hiring and expanding in Texas, and the reason the consumer side's margins are squeezed by the cost of the chips it buys. The two halves of the same company are pulling in opposite directions, and the consumer-electronics headcount is the side giving way.

Samsung told Reuters there is no broad global restructuring underway in its consumer products business. Some employees told Reuters they fear more cuts and a consolidation of the appliance, home-entertainment and mobile divisions as Samsung tilts further toward chips. A separate Samsung entity, Samsung SDS America, flagged 179 Ridgefield Park, NJ, roles in a June state notice tied to its own headquarters relocation; Samsung said those had "nothing to do with layoffs or restructuring." Severance terms for the SEA cuts were not disclosed.

NetApp: 77 San Jose WARN took effect Saturday, for a May filing

NetApp's 77-job San Jose reduction became effective the week of July 18, per the WARN notice the storage company filed with California on May 20 (CRN, May 28; Silicon Valley Business Journal, May 26). This is a WARN-effective date for an announcement made six weeks ago, not a new cut: employees were notified the week of May 19 and the separations were always scheduled for the week of July 18. The roles hit are in product management, software engineering and sales at NetApp's Santana Row headquarters. NetApp called it a "strategic realignment to respond to rapidly evolving customer needs" and pointed to cloud-led storage and AI positioning; the company's most recent quarterly revenue was near $1.7 billion. Not counted in the July tally above (the announcement is May, not July); listed here so the WARN-effective date is on the record.

Coursera: post-Udemy merger cuts landed July 6, number undisclosed

Earlier this month, on July 6, Coursera committed to a workforce reduction tied to its completed merger with Udemy (which closed May 11), per an SEC 8-K. The company did not disclose how many people are affected. It expects $8 million to $11 million in charges, primarily severance and healthcare benefits, mostly landing in Q3 and Q4 2026. As of December 31, 2025, Coursera had 1,307 full-time employees and Udemy had 1,380, a combined base of roughly 2,687 before integration. Coursera told investors the combined platform would carry $115 million in annual run-rate cost synergies within 24 months, and the July 6 filing turns that synergy promise into a payroll action. The sharper detail is the irony RuntimeWire flagged: Coursera is cutting jobs while building a platform whose stated purpose is helping workers adapt to job disruption. Not in the tally (no disclosed headcount); tracked here because it is a significant July cut the daily record should carry.

OtherSide Entertainment: 35 gone in two weeks, fewer than 10 remain

Also earlier this month, the immersive-sim studio OtherSide Entertainment cut 18 more employees in early July, leaving fewer than 10 staff at the Thick as Thieves developer, Games.gg reported July 5. That followed 17 cuts roughly two weeks earlier tied to the cancellation of a project codenamed Argos, putting 35 people out the door in a fortnight. A studio representative confirmed the remaining staff are focused on updates for Thick as Thieves and that there are "currently no plans for the studio to work on any future games." OtherSide, founded by Paul Neurath and Warren Spector, is one of the legacy immersive-sim names (System Shock, Underworld Ascendant lineage), and a studio that size dropping to under 10 with no future projects is effectively a wind-down without a closure announcement. Not AI. Clean commercial-failure / funding-collapse mechanism, the same family as ZA/UM and 1047 Games earlier this month. Not in the tally (the 18-July figure is confirmed but the earlier 17 was late June); noted here for the game-studio beat.

Tracking

• Meta AI-layoff suit: separations proceed Wednesday, July 22; Judge Orrick's deadline for Meta to explain the four visa plaintiffs' selection is Thursday, July 23; the preliminary injunction hearing that will revisit the AI question with evidence is August 24. No new filings this cycle. (Courthouse News)
• Verizon cost reset: Q2 earnings land July 24, the first full read on Schulman's $5B OpEx program since the third round (~500 corporate, ~2,500 retail transfers) was confirmed July 16.
• Xbox reset: no new cuts this cycle. 1,600 of the 3,200 remain scheduled through the fiscal year; WARN-effective dates for id Software (136 TX), ZeniMax Online (213 MD), Obsidian (52 CA) and the broader WA filing are still September 4. ZeniMax Online's entire top leadership exited per a July 15 memo (covered July 16).

Hiring counter-signal

The Samsung story carries its own counter-signal inside the same company. The consumer-electronics arm is shedding New Jersey headcount while the semiconductor division posts record profit and expands in Texas, with the Taylor foundry on track to begin operations by end of 2026 and the Austin fab running since 1996. The headquarters move physically relocates SEA's leadership next to the chip-side hiring. Texas is also where the broader AI-hardware buildout is concentrating, and Samsung is one of the beneficiaries. The talent absorbing this round is internal, not a rival, but the geography of where the jobs are going (Texas, chips) and where they are leaving (New Jersey, consumer electronics) is the same split showing up across the tracker.