A huge tech acquisition with ramifications in U.S. trade policy will mean thousands of layoffs, including hundreds in Atlanta, according to government filings and industry sources.
With regulatory approval final this week of Broadcom’s purchase of cloud computing company VMware, the company will slash 217 jobs in six waves locally starting in January and ending in May, according to a notification filed with the state government.
Both Broadcom and VMWare are based in California, but both companies have a significant presence in the Atlanta area.
The doomed jobs include technical staff, marketing, network engineering and partner sales management, according to Channel Futures, which covers information and communication technologies.
A company filing in Colorado showed 184 layoffs there.
Company-wide, the cuts will reach into the thousands, and perhaps more than 10,000 jobs, Channel Futures reported. The layoffs are intended to boost the company’s profitability.
Broadcom had announced plans to purchase VMware more than a year ago, but the deal was held up getting regulatory approval from a number of governments. The last and most difficult hurdle was China, whose delay was seen as retaliation against the Biden administration’s restrictions on advanced computer chips and the equipment to make them, according to Channel Futures.
The publication said a translated statement from Chinese regulators said Broadcom must concede to some “restrictive conditions,” around some of its technology.
With the deal complete, VMware president Sumit Dhawan departed, joining Proofpoint, a security tech company, as its chief executive, according to The Register.
VMware was spun off from Dell Technologies in 2021. Michael Dell owned 40% of the company, and investment firm Silver Lake owned a little less than 10%.
The Broadcom purchase of VMware is widely estimated at a value of $69 billion, meaning that it netted Dell and Silver Lake tens of billions of dollars, according to the Financial Times.
Broadcom, a Silicon Valley-based company, has its roots in research by AT&T’s Bell Labs, Lucent and Hewlett-Packard, according to the company’s website.
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