News that the open source giant Red Hat laid off all members of its Chinese R&D team spread on social platforms. The news was later confirmed by an email sent by Red Hat's CTO and senior vice president of global engineering to the Chinese team.The content of the email shows that as part of the global site selection strategy,Red Hat will cease engineering activities in China.
The affected employees will no longer assume daily work responsibilities with immediate effect, but the employment relationship will be retained until July 31, 2026 when it is officially terminated.
According to Yun Toutiao,The layoffs involve approximately 419 people, and the compensation package ranges from N+3 to N+6, subject to the official notification.
According to the official website of Red Hat China, Red Hat currently has more than 700 employees in Greater China, including more than 500 people in the R&D and service teams, and the Beijing R&D center alone has gathered more than 300 software developers and scientific researchers.
This means that Red Hat’s core R&D capabilities in China have been almost uprooted, and R&D functions will be transferred to other engineering hubs in the Asia-Pacific region.
Red Hat China’s layoffs are no accident. In August 2024, parent company IBM decided to lay off most of its R&D and testing employees in China, involving more than 1,800 people.
In March 2025, IBM China Investment Company and all its branches ceased business activities and have filed for cancellation.
It is worth mentioning that while Red Hat itself is shifting its strategic focus, China's local operating system manufacturers are rising rapidly.
OpenEuler, an open source operating system led by Huawei, has a market share of more than 57.3% in newly installed capacity in 2025, forming a clear leading advantage.