Nearly two years after putting one of Folsom’s largest and most prominent corporate properties on the market, Intel has decided it isn’t selling after all.
The technology giant confirmed Wednesday that it will retain ownership of its sprawling 162-acre campus along Prairie City Road, abandoning the sale-and-leaseback plan it announced in late 2024. The decision marks a significant shift for the longtime Folsom campus, home to what has historically been the city’s largest private employer.
“After careful consideration, Intel has decided not to move forward with the sale and partial leaseback of our Folsom site,” Intel said in a statement shared with Folsom Times Wednesday. “We remain committed to the Folsom campus and have determined that retaining ownership best supports our long-term objectives.”
Intel said the decision followed a strategic reassessment and was “not a reflection of the quality or competitiveness of the proposals received.”
That distinction is significant. It indicates Intel’s decision was not simply the result of an unsuccessful effort to find a buyer. Rather, the company reassessed a real estate strategy developed during a very different period for Intel and determined it now prefers to retain ownership of the Folsom property.
When Intel announced the planned sale in November 2024, the company was in the midst of an aggressive cost-cutting campaign that included widespread workforce reductions, lower capital spending and efforts to reduce its real estate footprint.
At the time, Intel said it planned to sell the Folsom property while leasing back a significant portion of it as part of a broader effort to reduce underutilized office space and concentrate employees into fewer buildings to foster greater in-person collaboration.
The plan was never for Intel to leave Folsom. Instead, the question was whether the company needed to continue owning the entire campus.
Nearly two years later, Intel’s answer to that question has changed.
The size of the proposed transaction was substantial. The Prairie City Road property encompasses 161.78 acres along the Highway 50 corridor and includes seven buildings totaling approximately 1.67 million square feet.
The Folsom property is also more than a conventional corporate office complex. The campus includes nearly 310,000 square feet of laboratory space and approximately 53,000 square feet of data center space, reflecting the engineering and development work that has long taken place at the site.
Under the proposed sale-and-leaseback arrangement, Intel was expected to enter into a 12-year lease for four buildings totaling approximately 1.02 million square feet. The remaining three buildings, totaling nearly 650,000 square feet, were expected to carry shorter-term Intel leases and potentially become available for other uses.
Had the transaction moved forward, Intel would have gone from owning the entire campus to becoming a tenant on property it had controlled for decades.
That arrangement is now off the table.
By retaining ownership, Intel also retains control over the property, including its specialized facilities, how the campus is configured and how the site could be used to accommodate the company’s needs in the years ahead.
There is also a fundamental financial tradeoff involved in sale-and-leaseback transactions. Such deals can provide companies with immediate proceeds by converting owned real estate into cash, but they also create long-term rental obligations.
In Folsom, Intel would have received the proceeds from selling the entire property while simultaneously committing itself to leasing more than 1 million square feet of the campus for 12 years.
Intel has not said that long-term lease costs prompted the reversal. However, retaining the property preserves the company’s control over the campus rather than placing Intel in the position of leasing much of the same specialized space from a new owner.
The corporate environment surrounding the Folsom decision has changed considerably since the property was first put on the market.
In 2024, Intel announced a sweeping cost-reduction initiative aimed at cutting approximately $10 billion in expenses as the company worked to improve profitability and reposition itself in an increasingly competitive semiconductor industry.
Those reductions included plans to eliminate more than 15% of Intel’s global workforce, along with reductions in capital spending, operating expenses and real estate holdings. Folsom was among the locations affected by workforce reductions as Intel worked to lower costs companywide.
Intel employed approximately 100,000 people worldwide when the Folsom property sale was announced in late 2024. By mid-2026, its global workforce had fallen below 78,000.
Since then, Intel has also undergone significant leadership and strategic changes.
Lip-Bu Tan became Intel’s chief executive officer in 2025 and has continued restructuring the company while placing greater emphasis on its core computing businesses, engineering execution, artificial intelligence, manufacturing and foundry operations and more disciplined allocation of capital.
Intel has not attributed the Folsom decision to any single change in leadership or corporate strategy. But the company’s description of the move as a “strategic reassessment” makes clear that a real estate decision made during the cost-cutting environment of 2024 has now been reconsidered with a different result.
For Folsom, the decision carries particular significance because of Intel’s long history in the city.
At its peak, the Folsom operation employed approximately 5,000 people and became one of the Sacramento region’s most significant technology employment centers. The expansive Prairie City Road campus has remained one of the most recognizable corporate properties along the Highway 50 corridor even as Intel’s workforce and use of the site have changed over the years.
Wednesday’s announcement should not, however, be interpreted as an expansion of Intel’s local operations. Intel has announced no new hiring initiative, campus expansion or additional investment tied to the decision to retain the property.
What has changed is Intel’s position on the future ownership of one of Folsom’s largest corporate properties.
In 2024, Intel determined it could continue operating in Folsom without owning the entire campus, choosing instead to pursue a sale that would turn the company into a long-term tenant on much of the property.
In 2026, after nearly two years of pursuing that strategy, Intel has reached a different conclusion: owning the Folsom campus once again fits better with the company’s long-term objectives.
For now, that means Intel will remain not only an occupant of its longtime Folsom campus, but the owner of all 162 acres and its seven-building complex as the company determines what role the site will play in its future.
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