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Intel appoints Lip-Bu Tan as its CEO
- yoyoyo1122 2y agoLip-Bu Tan was previously on the board but left after disagreements: > Over time, Tan grew frustrated by the company’s large workforce, its approach to contract manufacturing and Intel’s risk-averse and bureaucratic culture, according to the sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly. https://www.reuters.com/technology/intel-board-member-quit-after-differences-over-chipmakers-revival-plan-2024-08-27/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/intel-board-member-quit-a...
- silisili 2y agoTan's complaints seem to be the same ones I read here over and over from ex-employees, so hopefully he can actually turn it around.
- Galanwe 2y agoThe current CEO was supposed to be a down to earth, technical, no bureaucracy guy as well.
- htrp 2y agoso he's getting knifed after 6 months and Intel will be in even worse shape?
- KerrAvon 2y agoseems to be the case
- BoredPositron 2y agoHe is exactly there to be knifed after he cut intel into easy to sell pieces.
- justahuman74 2y agoYeah I hope they negotiated a really nice severance package in the employment contract
- DebtDeflation 2y agoIt's really simple - either Intel is shipping products on 18A (Panther Lake and Clearwater Forest) by Q1 of next year or they are not, and their entire future hinges on this.
- gpm 2y agoI'm not an expert in the silicon business, but I'm pretty sure the lead time is long enough that an incoming CEO has little impact on whether or not they are shipping a new architecture in less than 12 months. Intel's valuation might hinge on it, but evaluating the CEOs success or not... that doesn't strike me as a great idea.
- brookst 2y agoAgree you can’t evaluate entirely on ship date, but you can evaluate on how well the company handles either the last year of development or pivoting and adapting if it’s late. It’s challenging times at Intel, lots of opportunity for a CEO to show great leadership either in success or adversity.
- DebtDeflation 2y agoTotally agree. Even the 3.5 years in the role that Pat Gelsinger got was insufficient to see his strategies come to fruition. At this point it's baked and there's not much anyone can do. My point isn't to assign credit/blame, it's simply to point out that Intel will not survive in its current form if they are not shipping 18A products by this time next year.
- pwarner 2y agoAgreed, and to the sibling comment who ponders if the new CEO is too late to influence this... He may be. But he needs to decide if he thinks it can be solved, and if not immediately push the fab business out. Even if it gets pushed out to bankruptcy or sold for $1. I own some Intel stock so I sure hope it works, but they need to take urgent action if it's not...
- melling 2y agoThere is no current permanent CEO. Pat Gelsinger got fired last December. I liked him but it sounds like the board got impatient. Intel trying to regain a foothold in fabs is costly and time consuming. Hopefully, they are finally able to turn it around.
- outside1234 2y ago[flagged]
- anonym29 2y agoIsn't it kind of mean-spirited and divisive to imply that people are mentally unwell for practicing religious beliefs of their choice? Would you still be saying that if he was Muslim, Jewish, or Hindu?
- falcor84 2y agoPracticing a religion in your own, and asking your employees to practice it are two very different things
- anonym29 2y agoI'm agnostic, but I wouldn't personally be offended or bothered if my Indian CEO sent out a letter asking my coworkers and I to try Hindu meditation or yoga, nor would I be offended or bothered by Pat's suggestion, nor by a suggestion that I try fasting for the month of Ramadan, etc etc. Am I misunderstanding some aspect of this? Was Pat demanding rather than asking or something like that?
- falcor84 2y agoMaybe we're just different, but I would be extremely offended by a suggestion that I fast for ramadan, just as I would if I were asked to eat kosher for a month, or to go on a vegan diet for a month, or even just to watch his favorite cooking show for a month. Whether they were suggestions, requests or demands, I find these to be unreasonable intrusions of the company into people's private lives. Asking people to pray, might be a tiny bit less intrusive, but I still find it to be unreasonable.
- anonym29 2y agoWould you be more offended by your employer contacting you during your vacation to ask you to work, or is that less offensive to you because it's less unrelated to work? Is the company asking you to go to a morale event where free food is being served less offensive? Perhaps a better way to ask what I'm trying to get at... if asking (not demanding) you to try fasting is too intrusive into your personal life, what are some examples of an appropriate amount of intrusion into your personal life for the company, by way of voluntary, optional requests? Is the problem that there's an ask with nothing offered in return? Is it that the ask isn't work-related? Is it that it's the company's leadership asking, rather than your coworker? I am a big proponent of voluntarism - I believe that voluntary interaction free of coercion is at least partially inherently ethical in a way that involunatry interactions featuring coercion aren't. I tend to give a lot of good faith leeway to voluntary interactions (requests) that I do not give to coercion (demands), so your perspective is very intriguing to me and I want to understand it better.
- Alupis 2y ago> The current CEO was supposed to be a down to earth, technical, no bureaucracy guy as well. Turning a ship the size of Intel is a super power in it's own right. Especially one with such a large entrenched bureaucracy as Intel has. Politics aside for a moment - we're seeing the death bellows of many large, entrenched bureaucracies right now with DOGE - the main difference is the fight is in full public view instead of behind closed doors. We can only imagine and speculate at the resistance Pat and others met while trying to change Intel's course. The infamous Oscar Wilde quote is very applicable: "The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy." - Ever large bureaucracy eventually exists largely to preserve itself. This is why it is so incredibly difficult to reduce the size of a bureaucracy. Every member is convinced the organization will fail tomorrow if they are let go today, and every member fights/resists any and all changes that threaten their bureaucracy and the status quo. Best of luck to Tan - I truly hope they succeed where many have failed at Intel. AMD needs a healthy Intel to drive motivation and competition. The world will be watching.
- UltraSane 2y ago"we're seeing the death bellows of many large, entrenched bureaucracies right now with DOGE" DOGE is just Musk bribing Trump into letting him settle scores and shut down agencies that are investigating him or that he doesn't like. Finding and eliminating "inefficiency" is just another one of Musk's myriad lies. I'm shocked at how many people still consider him to have any credibility at all.
- netsharc 2y ago[flagged]
- pertymcpert 2y agoWhy is that?
- netsharc 2y agoI agree with grandparent commenter that it's shocking a lot of people (also here) think DOGE is a serious endeavour and not some slapstick bunch of people. The realization is that even in here, plenty of people's emotions cloud their ability to think.
- rickandmortyy 2y ago[dead]
- tester756 2y agoWhat does he bring over Pat or Michelle?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- DebtDeflation 2y agoThat's what I'm trying to understand. His educational background was in Physics/Nuclear Engineering so he's obviously a smart guy, and he was CEO/Chairman of Cadence for 15 years, but other than that his 40+ year career has most been in VC and being on the boards of an incredibly large number of companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lip-Bu_Tan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lip-Bu_Tan https://www.linkedin.com/in/lip-bu-tan-284a7846/details/experience/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/lip-bu-tan-284a7846/details/expe...
- bloomingkales 2y agoThey may have just agreed to get Intel to this point and hand it off.
- alterom 2y ago>he was CEO/Chairman of Cadence for 15 years, but other than that Oh, so he's only been leading one of the handful of companies making the full software suite for all stages of silicon design and simulation for 15 years, no biggie. You're aware what kind of company Cadence is, are you?
- Veserv 2y agoI know, right? John Sculley ran the, at the time, most successful computer maker, Apple, for 10 years. Brian Krzanich ran the, at the time, largest chip maker, Intel, for 6 years. They were the authorities; their decision-making and abilities running businesses in those industries must have been impeccable to do so for so long.
- 2y ago
- jauntywundrkind 2y agoHe's supposedly quite low level, savvy about Platform Development Kits (PDK). Worked at Cadence, so he knows a lot about relating to other people making chips, selling IP, working with EDA tools. A lot of potential here! The disagreement with the board was supposedly related more to elements of the board trying to parts up and sell off bits of Intel. Harder to report that directly. Good for him, food sign if true. Today was a very very good day to be hanging out on TechPoutine podcast. Very fun to have this as breaking news at the end of stream. https://www.youtube.com/live/aSoYz9Qp1xI https://www.youtube.com/live/aSoYz9Qp1xI
- rabidonrails 2y ago>>The disagreement with the board was supposedly related more to elements of the board trying to parts up and sell off bits of Intel. If true this would be very interesting. The most recent rumors were TSMC was trying to grab a part of Intel and have Nvidia/Broadcom/AMD take over the rest. Bringing in a CEO that literally left the board because he was against carving up Intel would be quite the signal from the board.
- alecco 2y ago> That's what I'm trying to understand. His educational background was in Physics/Nuclear Engineering so he's obviously a smart guy, and he was CEO/Chairman of Cadence for 15 years, but other than that his 40+ year career has most been in VC and being on the boards of an incredibly large number of companies. He is no Pat. He is no Andy. He is a business guy with some hard science behind (not electronics per se). It doesn't feel right.
- gkanai 2y ago> It doesn't feel right. Who would you have as CEO?
- UncleOxidant 2y agoGelsinger. Should've kept Pat and gotten rid of (at least some of) the board.
- 1024core 2y ago> Tan left Intel's board last year over disagreements on how to turn around the company. He felt Intel had too many layers of middle management Good sign.
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoRemaking Our Company for the Future: A message from Lip-Bu Tan, who has been named Intel CEO, to company employees. https://newsroom.intel.com/corporate/lip-bu-tan-remaking-our-company-future https://newsroom.intel.com/corporate/lip-bu-tan-remaking-our...
- branko_d 2y ago> Together, we will work hard to restore Intel’s position as a world-class products company, establish ourselves as a world-class foundry and delight our customers like never before. Sounds like he wants design and foundry to stay together.
- gautamcgoel 2y agoLet's wish him luck. He will sure as hell need it.
- lvl155 2y agoI am not sure if Intel can survive on its own. Games changed quite a bit and Nvidia is about to enter the space and will likely gain significant shares if they bundle their products in anticompetitive ways. It will be cutthroat for both Intel and AMD. But if he pulls it off, he will go down in history as the guy who saved Intel.
- pwarner 2y agoThey certainly need to make chips for others to retain the scale needed to make chips. As far as x86 goes, it's not as sexy as GPUs or mobile chips but they're still selling a ton of x86.
- lvl155 2y agoFor now. Nvidia is starting to package everything and eat the whole DC market. x86 is not looking so great outside of legacy use cases.
- neelm 2y agoIf he wants to succeed, he will need to reconsistute the board. That's a tough one since they appointed him, but otherwise it won't work. The type of transformation Intel needs to go through won't withstand a myopic, short term oriented bureaucracy.
- alienthrowaway 2y ago> If he wants to succeed, he will need to reconsistute the board. Intel is a publicly listed company.
- beambot 2y agoYes, and I'm sure all those public shareholders are mighty unhappy with the current board's stewardship.
- missedthecue 2y agoUnfortunately, index funds and mutual funds own about 68% of the Intel, with Vanguard retirement funds being the biggest. These passive custodian investor companies just vote along with the board's recommendation rather than making opinionated or activist decisions.
- brookst 2y agoI’m with you except “unfortunately”. I don’t think we really want Vanguard trying to be an activist investor in all the companies they have major positions in.
- missedthecue 2y agoIt's a huge downside of passive investing. We lose a democratic element of corporate America by surrendering our votes to a couple big custodians that really don't care either way. I agree that I don't think Vanguard trying to make opinions on 1000s of company votes is the fix.
- markus_zhang 2y agoThere will be a all-hands in the next few weeks, supposedly. I hope whoever sees this reply, if you are in a position to do so comfortably, ask him straightforwardly whether he has or has heard about a plan to knife and sell INTC in the next 18 months.
- alecco 2y agoIntel employees are at high risk of losing their jobs. I don't think cornering the new CEO at an all-hands is a good idea. And I wouldn't even trust his answer, anyway.
- usr1106 2y agoOf course you cannot trust it. If you are working in a publicly traded company (as an ordinary employee) you never hear strategic changes first from your management. They have to make a filing to the stock exchange before they tell you.
- guy234 2y agowhy
- alecco 2y agoSounds like the guy to trim Intel to be sold in in parts. Intel engineers: thank you for these amazing machines, for all these years. They shaped many lives. We salute you.
- frosting1337 2y agoActually, he sounds like the opposite, but anyway.
- alterom 2y agoWhat? He's led Cadence for many years. You know, making tools to design silicone. As a former Cadence employee, I really don't have any complains about his leadership, looking back at my time there. He's been on Intel's board for a long time too. I have no idea where you'd get that impression, so please elaborate.
- alecco 2y agoOn the contrary, because he was leading Cadence it looks like he will at least spin off the fabs. The major card Intel had against competitors was the integration. The tick-tock model. The failure of Intel is in the board and terrible middle-managers. If Intel becomes fabless like AMD it will be left with the worse parts. They will make money in the sale but there will be nothing left. Intel had a lot of cool tech recently like Optane and QAT. The failure to get market adoption lies squarely in management. Can you believe they put in-chip yearly licenses to enable QAT, that's INSANE (what if they 10x the license price next year?). And of course, almost zero reach out to open source. Only a PoC and calling it a day. IMHO, Intel should concentrate in their core strengths. Fire most of the managers, get rid of the toxic board. Open all they can and invest heavily in documentation and software, guided by the community. But this is not going to happen. The board is firmly in place.
- foldl2022 2y agoTan looks like Pat. Amazing.
- mepian 2y agoTan is much taller apparently.
- system2 2y agoIt spiked the stock to $23. Let's see how long it takes to go back to $19.50 again. Intel became a pump and dump stock.
- htk 2y agoThis author has a very interesting mail list on the semiconductor industry, and kind of predicted the new CEO: https://irrationalanalysis.substack.com/p/make-intel-great-again https://irrationalanalysis.substack.com/p/make-intel-great-a...
- dash2 2y agoI read through some posts and found this, after Gelsinger was fired: >It’s over. > If corporations are people, then Intel has decided to commit suicide and sell its vital organs. Yet now the same guy seems more positive ("The best outcome has happened.... Lip-Bu Tan lacks the critical flaw that Gelsinger had… excessive kindness"). > A tsunami of decapitation (headcount reduction) is coming. However unpleasant the last several years has been… what is coming will be much worse. > This will be a disorderly decapitation frenzy. Nobody is safe. Did that happen? If not, did he say why he was mistaken? If not, then is this guy not overconfident and incapable of revising his own priors?
- oskarkk 2y ago> Did that happen? If not, did he say why he was mistaken? If not, then is this guy not overconfident and incapable of revising his own priors? The author thinks that it's about to happen, so it's too early to expect any revision. In that earlier post they said that Lip-Bu Tan resigned from the board because he wanted to reduce headcount more than Gelsinger, and that in their opinion hiring him and carrying out that reduction would be the best outcome for Intel. Given that Lip-Bu Tan got hired, I think it's reasonable to expect some reductions soon. Before this the author listed a couple of possible outcomes, and as I understand it, Lip-Bu Tan and his reductions are described as one of the less chaotic and "unpleasant" options for Intel, because his cuts would be more specific than cuts that would be the result of splits/mergers/bankruptcy.
- m3kw9 2y agoIs this another one of Jensen and Lisa’s cousins?
- osnium123 2y agoNo, he’s from Malaysia and not from Taiwan
- t1234s 2y agoDoes Intel have any path to its stock price going 10x?
- pwarner 2y agoYes, and also 0x. I'd say they are equally likely. 2x or 0.5x seem most likely to me. I own shares at about $20. It's my gamble since I don't casino or sports gamble :-)
- bsdice 2y agoA few years after the first battle over Taiwan has taken place. There has been news about Broadcom and NVidia testing their designs on Intel process nodes. Which is arguably worse in at least two respects, they are behind TSMC in density and also proprietary software tooling at Intel. After the 13000/14000 CPU chip death issues possibly also in regard to reliability. But they still want to do it. Although this page in the history books is not yet written, companies hedging their bets this way is a really bad sign.
- indolering 2y ago> A few years after the first battle over Taiwan has taken place. Awful but true. > There has been news about Broadcom and NVidia testing their designs on Intel process nodes. Links? It makes sense to invest in second and third sources, even if it does mean handing money to a competitor. Especially given the instability of the global community right now.
- bsdice 2y agoReuters ran the story: https://www.reuters.com/technology/nvidia-broadcom-testing-chips-intel-manufacturing-process-sources-say-2025-03-03/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/nvidia-broadcom-testing-c...
- dash2 2y agoIf you're looking for 10x, you are gambling. Buy calls on GME or quantum or whatever.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- MangoCoffee 2y agoQuestion: Why is Intel rehiring people they previously let go? Pat Gelsinger – ex-Intel, rehired as CEO, ousted. Lip-Bu Tan – ex board member, ousted due to disagreements on how to turn the company around. If Intel removed him over disagreements on turnaround, what will be different this time?
- oskarkk 2y agoIt seems that Lip-Bu Tan resigned on his own, because he disagreed with the direction of the board and Gelsinger. Given that they fired Gelsinger and hired Lip-Bu Tan, it seems that they now think his direction may be better for Intel. https://www.reuters.com/technology/intel-board-member-quit-after-differences-over-chipmakers-revival-plan-2024-08-27/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/intel-board-member-quit-a... > Over time, Tan grew frustrated by the company’s large workforce, its approach to contract manufacturing and Intel’s risk-averse and bureaucratic culture, according to the sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly. (...) > To cut costs, Intel announced in August layoffs of more than 15% of its workforce (...). The layoff plan was one source of tension between Tan and the board, according to sources. Tan wanted specific cuts, including middle managers who do not contribute to Intel's engineering efforts. > Gelsinger, who took over in 2021 as part of a turnaround plan, added at least 20,000 employees to Intel's payroll by 2022. To Tan and some former Intel executives, the workforce appeared bloated. Teams on some projects were as much as five times larger than others doing comparable work at rivals such as AMD, according to two sources. One former executive said Intel should have cut double the number it announced in August years ago.
- hackburg 2y ago[dead]