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Paywalled article for me.

BeetleB 2y ago
"Haas and I touched on all that and more in an exclusive interview earlier today, which will air in full on a future episode of Decoder. (You can listen to my episode about AI spending in the enterprise that just came out as well.) In the meantime, I wanted to give subscribers the first peek at the highlights from my conversation with Haas." "As someone who has been in the industry my whole career, it is a little sad to see what’s happening… Intel is an innovation powerhouse. At the same time, you have to innovate in our industry. There are lots of tombstones of great tech companies that don’t reinvent themselves. I think Intel’s biggest dilemma is how to disassociate being either a vertical company or a fabless company, to oversimplify it. That is the fork in the road that they’ve faced for the last decade. Pat [Gelsinger] had a strategy that was very clear that vertical was the way to win. In my opinion, when he took that strategy on in 2021, that was not a three-year strategy. That was a five-to-10-year strategy. He’s gone and there’s a new CEO to be brought in and the decision has to be made. My personal bias says that vertical integration is a pretty powerful thing. If they could get that right, I think they would be in an amazing position. But the cost associated with it is so high that it may be too big of a hill to climb. I’m not going to comment on the rumors that we wanted to buy them." Pat said similar things. He started off with "5 year journey", but a year or two in, when the demand for PCs dropped significantly, he did say it may take longer. The board didn't want to wait that long and/or thought the company's financials couldn't support it (continuing low revenues for a few more years, etc). The money they just got 2 weeks ago from the CHIPS Act prevents selling the fabs (Intel needs to have 51% ownership). Perhaps Pat committed to this and the board was upset, because it makes it hard to kill the fabs and make Intel fabless?

"Haas and I touched on all that and more in an exclusive interview earlier today, which will air in full on a future episode of Decoder. (You can listen to my episode about AI spending in the enterprise that just came out as well.) In the meantime, I wanted to give subscribers the first peek at the highlights from my conversation with Haas." "As someone who has been in the industry my whole career, it is a little sad to see what’s happening… Intel is an innovation powerhouse. At the same time, you have to innovate in our industry. There are lots of tombstones of great tech companies that don’t reinvent themselves. I think Intel’s biggest dilemma is how to disassociate being either a vertical company or a fabless company, to oversimplify it. That is the fork in the road that they’ve faced for the last decade. Pat [Gelsinger] had a strategy that was very clear that vertical was the way to win. In my opinion, when he took that strategy on in 2021, that was not a three-year strategy. That was a five-to-10-year strategy. He’s gone and there’s a new CEO to be brought in and the decision has to be made. My personal bias says that vertical integration is a pretty powerful thing. If they could get that right, I think they would be in an amazing position. But the cost associated with it is so high that it may be too big of a hill to climb. I’m not going to comment on the rumors that we wanted to buy them." Pat said similar things. He started off with "5 year journey", but a year or two in, when the demand for PCs dropped significantly, he did say it may take longer. The board didn't want to wait that long and/or thought the company's financials couldn't support it (continuing low revenues for a few more years, etc). The money they just got 2 weeks ago from the CHIPS Act prevents selling the fabs (Intel needs to have 51% ownership). Perhaps Pat committed to this and the board was upset, because it makes it hard to kill the fabs and make Intel fabless?