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> It didn't' work, that's not a crime. He left because his plan didn't work. That's what happens to CEO's who try and fail to implement a business plan. We don

> It didn't' work, that's not a crime. He left because his plan didn't work. That's what happens to CEO's who try and fail to implement a business plan. We don't know that it didn't work. We also don't know that selling it off would've been significantly better, so it's weird to pretend that keeping the foundry part of Intel was this big failure. Intel is a cargo ship that doesn't turn on a dime. But the board and investors don't have the patience for long-term strategy that could get Intel out of its downward spiral. The CEO leaving is just another symptom of that, and a sign that Intel is just continuing to dig its own grave, damn the consequences. Just look at all the other projects Intel has tried and failed in the past 20ish years. Zero patience for anything that doesn't bring in billions and isn't immediately successful. We're all just waiting for Intel to give up on the Arc GPUs because of it.

pantalaimon 2y ago
> Zero patience for anything that doesn't bring in billions and isn't immediately successful. That reminds me a lot of Google
- api 2y ago
  The explosive growth of so many tech companies has set the bar for everything in some investors minds. If it doesn’t go absolutely vertical it is a failure. Unfortunately this rules out everything that involves anything physical (factories, cars, planes, fabs, etc.) and anything requiring research. In the end it leads to an economy that chases fads and devolves into a pure casino.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    The top businesses required many years, decades even, of heavy investments into physical infrastructure, including the things you listed plus data centers and global networking over land and under oceans. https://companiesmarketcap.com/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/ The only one that sort of went vertical was Meta, but even they had to build tons of data centers and networking infrastructure.
  - linotype 2y ago
    Well hopefully we don’t put anyone with a track record of bankrupting casinos in charge.
    - api 2y ago
      The people we elect represent the zeitgeist. Trump is about attention trolling and gambling.
vasco 2y ago
Maybe you have insider knowledge but if you say you don't know - how do you know what the CEO leaving is a symptom of? (I don't know) It's very easy to say that the CEO was trying for real and everyone else was against him as he is an engineer so it feels good to say it, but is there truth to the fact that it's just lack of patience and "shortsighted" thinking by the board, or is that just what people repeat because it sounds good to say? Pat was there from Feb 2021 to Dec 2024. In that time he fired 5k+ people (https://www.warntracker.com/company/intel https://www.warntracker.com/company/intel) and now had plans to fire 15k more. We can also look at earnings during his tenure, I don't need to tell you when he joined because you'll know from looking at this: https://m.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/INTC/intel/eps-earnings-per-share-diluted https://m.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/INTC/intel/eps-earni... So in my simple view, we have a guy that came in with an ambitious plan to burn many billions, fire a bunch of people and turn the company around. He did the first two but in 3.5 years couldn't do the actual goal, and was just starting to present some kind of phase two with more layoffs and potentially more burning of money. Plus all the million factors people on the outside wouldn't know. So what we know is the plan wasn't working yet at least, but who knows if it ever will. it's only shortsighted if you interrupt a good plan, if you interrupt a bad one you are a visionary.
- edoceo 2y ago
  Yep. The difference between persistence and stubbornness is the outcome.
- rowanG077 2y ago
  TBH 3.5 years is a fart in the wind for change in a company the size of Intel.
  - vasco 2y ago
    On the other hand it's around 7% of a regular person's career. I didn't intend the number to have some ulterior motive as I don't know how long it should take, it is what it is. But it was long enough for the board.
- adrian_b 2y ago
highwaylights 2y ago
Ironically I think this is the nail in the coffin. Pushing the whole company towards 18A as soon as possible made a lot of sense. Arc made a lot of sense (as it becomes competitive when you get to 18A). We’re not there yet. Sacking the CEO, throwing him under the bus, and then publicly demanding salary back just reflects really badly on Intel. I don’t know the details of what’s happened behind the scenes and if there was any impropriety, that being said: Intel under Pat was in a bad place, but it wasn’t a public clown show.
- coliveira 2y ago
  Whatever Intel is now, is the direct outcome of poor leadership by Pat Gelsinger. That was his entire job, and he failed.
  - Wytwwww 2y ago
    Do you think Intel would have done better with him than without him? Because they were basically doing nothing for 5-10 years. How long do you think it would take to fix a company like that? I mean I'm not necessarily defending Gelsinger but throwing away the entire board and most of upper management would have been be the first step if they were about changing anything..
- e3bc54b2 2y ago
  Intel is strategically important corporation. Investors know that. They want to keep extracting profits, knowing that when (not if) things go dogshit (even more so than today), the public will bail them out. Since this CEO worked on other stupid things like long term technical viability, instead of pursuing the higher priority (investor returns), he was shown the way out. 2008 was an eye opening year for a lot of rich people.
- ksec 2y ago
  >Sacking the CEO, throwing him under the bus, and then publicly demanding salary back just reflects really badly on Intel. Now that shines a new light. Not sure where you have this idea but definitely some food for thought. Basically someone doesn't like Pat. I wouldn't be surprised if it was ex-Intel Board members.
Octoth0rpe 2y ago
> We're all just waiting for Intel to give up on the Arc GPUs because of it. I'm sure all kinds of radical cost cutting is being proposed internally, but I'd be surprised if this was on the line. My thinking is that Arc GPUs are the "walk before you run" product that will lead to Intel producing AI accelerators, which is a reasonable bet re: a pathway to profitability.
- MoreMoore 2y ago
  A lot of projects are "walk before you run". Didn't stop Intel from killing them and wasting all their time, money and effort. That's Intel's problem. I don't want them to kill Arc. It's what they need long-term. I simply don't believe they have the persistence and long-term vision to keep at it despite lackluster sales and lack of interest.
- b112 2y ago
  "AI accelerators" are at peak profitability right now. Within a few years, certainly by 2030, chip optimizations and improvements will see Raspberry Pis or your phone doing AI work. I expect we may even aee AI cores on phones, by 2036.
  - dismalaf 2y ago
    Some phones have TPUs on them today...
  - prionic6 2y ago
    Phones are already getting NPUs / TPUs / Neural Engines / whatever fancy marketing term they can come up with.
  - nickpeterson 2y ago
    I think software optimizations are going to heavily impact gpu/ai-accelerator demand. It feels like we’re leaving the ‘brute force’ make it work era and entering the ‘make it work on my phone without killing battery life” era. I wouldn’t be shocked if within a few years there just isn’t the need for custom hardware at all.
pbhjpbhj 2y ago
> It didn't' work, that's not a crime. // Well yh, when you're being paid a normal wage. In USA that sounds like maybe $200k for proven senior engineers? So, just return anything they took above that - which I'm guessing is going to round to the full wage. Honestly, I don't really understand why the people are taking so much more than their share even when successful.

pantalaimon 2y ago

> Zero patience for anything that doesn't bring in billions and isn't immediately successful. That reminds me a lot of Google

api 2y ago
The explosive growth of so many tech companies has set the bar for everything in some investors minds. If it doesn’t go absolutely vertical it is a failure. Unfortunately this rules out everything that involves anything physical (factories, cars, planes, fabs, etc.) and anything requiring research. In the end it leads to an economy that chases fads and devolves into a pure casino.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  The top businesses required many years, decades even, of heavy investments into physical infrastructure, including the things you listed plus data centers and global networking over land and under oceans. https://companiesmarketcap.com/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/ The only one that sort of went vertical was Meta, but even they had to build tons of data centers and networking infrastructure.
- linotype 2y ago
  Well hopefully we don’t put anyone with a track record of bankrupting casinos in charge.
  - api 2y ago
    The people we elect represent the zeitgeist. Trump is about attention trolling and gambling.

vasco 2y ago

Maybe you have insider knowledge but if you say you don't know - how do you know what the CEO leaving is a symptom of? (I don't know) It's very easy to say that the CEO was trying for real and everyone else was against him as he is an engineer so it feels good to say it, but is there truth to the fact that it's just lack of patience and "shortsighted" thinking by the board, or is that just what people repeat because it sounds good to say? Pat was there from Feb 2021 to Dec 2024. In that time he fired 5k+ people (https://www.warntracker.com/company/intel https://www.warntracker.com/company/intel) and now had plans to fire 15k more. We can also look at earnings during his tenure, I don't need to tell you when he joined because you'll know from looking at this: https://m.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/INTC/intel/eps-earnings-per-share-diluted https://m.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/INTC/intel/eps-earni... So in my simple view, we have a guy that came in with an ambitious plan to burn many billions, fire a bunch of people and turn the company around. He did the first two but in 3.5 years couldn't do the actual goal, and was just starting to present some kind of phase two with more layoffs and potentially more burning of money. Plus all the million factors people on the outside wouldn't know. So what we know is the plan wasn't working yet at least, but who knows if it ever will. it's only shortsighted if you interrupt a good plan, if you interrupt a bad one you are a visionary.

edoceo 2y ago
Yep. The difference between persistence and stubbornness is the outcome.
rowanG077 2y ago
TBH 3.5 years is a fart in the wind for change in a company the size of Intel.
- vasco 2y ago
  On the other hand it's around 7% of a regular person's career. I didn't intend the number to have some ulterior motive as I don't know how long it should take, it is what it is. But it was long enough for the board.
adrian_b 2y ago

highwaylights 2y ago

Ironically I think this is the nail in the coffin. Pushing the whole company towards 18A as soon as possible made a lot of sense. Arc made a lot of sense (as it becomes competitive when you get to 18A). We’re not there yet. Sacking the CEO, throwing him under the bus, and then publicly demanding salary back just reflects really badly on Intel. I don’t know the details of what’s happened behind the scenes and if there was any impropriety, that being said: Intel under Pat was in a bad place, but it wasn’t a public clown show.

coliveira 2y ago
Whatever Intel is now, is the direct outcome of poor leadership by Pat Gelsinger. That was his entire job, and he failed.
- Wytwwww 2y ago
  Do you think Intel would have done better with him than without him? Because they were basically doing nothing for 5-10 years. How long do you think it would take to fix a company like that? I mean I'm not necessarily defending Gelsinger but throwing away the entire board and most of upper management would have been be the first step if they were about changing anything..
e3bc54b2 2y ago
Intel is strategically important corporation. Investors know that. They want to keep extracting profits, knowing that when (not if) things go dogshit (even more so than today), the public will bail them out. Since this CEO worked on other stupid things like long term technical viability, instead of pursuing the higher priority (investor returns), he was shown the way out. 2008 was an eye opening year for a lot of rich people.
ksec 2y ago
>Sacking the CEO, throwing him under the bus, and then publicly demanding salary back just reflects really badly on Intel. Now that shines a new light. Not sure where you have this idea but definitely some food for thought. Basically someone doesn't like Pat. I wouldn't be surprised if it was ex-Intel Board members.

Octoth0rpe 2y ago

> We're all just waiting for Intel to give up on the Arc GPUs because of it. I'm sure all kinds of radical cost cutting is being proposed internally, but I'd be surprised if this was on the line. My thinking is that Arc GPUs are the "walk before you run" product that will lead to Intel producing AI accelerators, which is a reasonable bet re: a pathway to profitability.

MoreMoore 2y ago
A lot of projects are "walk before you run". Didn't stop Intel from killing them and wasting all their time, money and effort. That's Intel's problem. I don't want them to kill Arc. It's what they need long-term. I simply don't believe they have the persistence and long-term vision to keep at it despite lackluster sales and lack of interest.
b112 2y ago
"AI accelerators" are at peak profitability right now. Within a few years, certainly by 2030, chip optimizations and improvements will see Raspberry Pis or your phone doing AI work. I expect we may even aee AI cores on phones, by 2036.
- dismalaf 2y ago
  Some phones have TPUs on them today...
- prionic6 2y ago
  Phones are already getting NPUs / TPUs / Neural Engines / whatever fancy marketing term they can come up with.
- nickpeterson 2y ago
  I think software optimizations are going to heavily impact gpu/ai-accelerator demand. It feels like we’re leaving the ‘brute force’ make it work era and entering the ‘make it work on my phone without killing battery life” era. I wouldn’t be shocked if within a few years there just isn’t the need for custom hardware at all.

pbhjpbhj 2y ago

> It didn't' work, that's not a crime. // Well yh, when you're being paid a normal wage. In USA that sounds like maybe $200k for proven senior engineers? So, just return anything they took above that - which I'm guessing is going to round to the full wage. Honestly, I don't really understand why the people are taking so much more than their share even when successful.