Dive Brief:
- Illumina will lay off 96 people at its San Diego headquarters beginning in April, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filed in California. Employees were notified by Feb. 12, Illumina said, and the layoffs will take effect between April and August.
- A spokesperson for the maker of DNA sequencing systems said the layoffs are not part of a broad-based reduction. “We have created new roles and reduced others,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. “Illumina continues to invest in advancing our strategy while also ensuring our structure, talent, and operating costs are aligned to support it.”
- The latest cuts follow 49 job terminations at Illumina’s headquarters on Oct. 1, 2024, and Jan. 24, 2025. Before that, Illumina cut 111 of the headquarters’ employees in March 2024.
Dive Insight:
Under CEO Jacob Thaysen, Illumina is working to reignite growth in its core genomics business after spinning off cancer test maker Grail last June, following a long battle with regulators opposed to the acquisition.
Frustration over the Grail transaction prompted activist investor Carl Icahn to launch a proxy contest that led to former CEO Francis deSouza’s resignation in June 2023.
Thaysen, named CEO three months later, told analysts in early 2024 that Illumina laid off about 12% of its global workforce over roughly a year as it pursued cost savings and focused on improving margins and revenue growth.
The most recent cuts span a wide range of positions, including managers, scientists, engineers, analysts and technicians.
Excluding Grail, Illumina had about 8,970 full-time and 60 part-time employees at the end of 2024, plus 1,340 contingent workers, according to its annual report. In late 2023, the company employed about 9,250 people full-time and 50 part-time, with 1,370 contingent workers.
Illumina is among numerous medtech companies to lay off workers in recent years amid profit pressures and shifting strategic priorities. Earlier this month, Staar Surgical said it would lay off 115 employees at two California facilities, while Thermo Fisher Scientific plans to cut 300 jobs at two sites in Massachusetts.
A MedTech Dive analysis tracked more than 14,000 layoffs across the industry from January 2023 to mid-2024.
