NEW YORK – Illumina laid off 96 workers at its San Diego headquarters, according to notices filed with the state of California earlier this month.
"While we do not share specific numbers, this action was not a broad-based reduction across the company," an Illumina spokesperson said in an email. "We have created new roles and reduced others."
Illumina continues to shed workers following a major round of layoffs in 2022 — approximately 500 employees, or around 5 percent of its global workforce at the time. The San Diego-based sequencing firm announced multiple rounds of layoffs in mid-2023. In 2024, Illumina terminated approximately 50 California-based workers, according to Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notifications filed with the state.
Earlier this month, the Chinese government clouded Illumina's 2025 revenue guidance of low-single-digit revenue growth compared to 2024 by placing the firm on the country's "unreliable entities" list, opening Illumina up to potential sanctions. Illumina officials said their guidance, issued just days after the Chinese government action, had not considered its possible effects.
In Thursday afternoon trading on the Nasdaq, shares of Illumina were down 5 percent at $97.98. The dip coincided with an online event for competitor Roche detailing its new nanopore sequencing platform.