Broadcom Inc., which has been in the process of acquiring enterprise software giant VMware Inc. for 18 months, will lay off at least 401 VMware employees — 184 in Broomfield, Colo. and 217 in Atlanta — less than one week after it completed the $69 billion merger on Nov. 22.

This is merely the first wave of employees to be let go. A Broadcom representative told The New Stack that he was unaware of the total number of layoffs that would result from the merger. Broadcom enlisted 21,000 full-time employees as of October, while VMware reported 38,300 FTEs in February.

The layoffs will impact staff in several countries and across a variety of roles spanning cloud, technical, engineering and marketing functions. This is according to VMware APJ vice president of partner ecosystem and commercial organization, Uma Thana Balasingham, who received her layoff notice this week and discussed it on LinkedIn.

“My initial encounter a few years ago with redundancy was unplanned, creating a disruptive transition and a confidence hit. In contrast, my current experience at VMware allowed for more preparation, although it still carries a sense of finality — a ‘good sad’ as I call it — that’s hard to ignore,” Balasingham wrote.

San Jose, Calif.-based Broadcom’s core business is in wireless, networking, cable modem and infrastructure components, which accounts for about 75% of its $40 billion yearly income. The company’s other business segments include semiconductor solutions and licensing, which account for the remaining 25% of its revenue.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based VMware will bring a $8.5 billion business into the Broadcom fold, which already includes 40 previous acquisitions, such as Symantec, CA, Brocade and Norton LifeLock.

VMware products fill a key computing layer for companies with on-premises data centers and hybrid cloud-based computing models. The company’s software layers provide virtualization, provision, management, load balancing and other key aspects of running applications in data centers. The company is widely known for its desktop virtualization software. It has been estimated by many industry people that more than 95% of all data centers utilize at least one VMware component.

From the time the acquisition was announced in May 2022, Broadcom had informed Wall Street analysts that there would be major cuts to VMware staff; as much as $250 million in overlapping services and staff positions were identified. In that May 2022 discussion, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan outlined a strategy to increase VMware’s profitability by $3.8 billion by “eliminating duplicative general and administration functions across human resources, finance, legal, facilities and information technology.”