Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger Retires Amidst Chipmaker's Tumultuous Recovery
Nearly four years ago, Pat Gelsinger returned to Intel, a company he first began working for at the age of 18, to replace Bob Swan as the company's chief executive officer (CEO). Now he's departing Intel for the last time (presumably), with Intel today announcing that Gelsinger has retired from the Santa Clara chip firm effective immediately, and has also stepped down from the board of directors.
Gelsinger's retirement caps off a career spanning more than 40 years, a large chunk of which was spent at Intel. In his place, Intel has named David Zinsner and Michelle Johnston Holthaus as interim co-CEOs while the board of directors looks for a permanent replacement.
"On behalf of the board, I want to thank Pat for his many years of service and dedication to Intel across a long career in technology leadership. Pat spent his formative years at Intel, then returned at a critical time for the company in 2021. As a leader, Pat helped launch and revitalize process manufacturing by investing in state-of-the-art semiconductor manufacturing, while working tirelessly to drive innovation throughout the company," said Frank Yeary, independent chair of the board of Intel.
The announcement comes as somewhat of a surprise, though it's not necessarily shocking. Intel has seen its share of struggles as of late, though to be fair, they began long before Gelsinger return to man the helm. He inherited a company that had conceded process leadership to AMD amid various struggles, both in direction and execution (remember Cannon Lake?).
Gelsinger immediately made it a priority to expand Intel's leading edge foundry business and to implement the company's IDM 2.0 strategy, part of which entailed delivering five nodes in four years as part of an ambitious chip architecture roadmap.
Intel was ultimately successful in that regard, though past missteps eventually caught up with the company as a whole, resulting in a major restructuring effort with a big round of layoffs amounting to 15% of Intel's workforce.
"These decisions have challenged me to my core, and this is the hardest thing I’ve done in my career," Gelsinger stated in a note to employees at the time. "My pledge to you is that we will prioritize a culture of honesty, transparency and respect in the weeks and months to come."
The ongoing effort to right the ship has been challenging, to say the least. It's also allowed rival AMD to chip away at Intel's market share and mind share, if you will. In addition, Arm-based solutions have made headway into x86 territory with Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite and Plus platforms powering the first round of Copilot+ PCs. Meanwhile, NVIDIA, best known for its GPUs, has been the dominant beneficiary of a burgeoning AI market.
Whoever succeeds Intel will have their work cut out for them. That said, Intel leads the x86 market by a wide margin, and the company appears to be on more solid footing today than when Gelsinger took over several years ago. It will take some time for Intel's investments, restructuring, and fab expansions to bear fruit.
"Leading Intel has been the honor of my lifetime—this group of people is among the best and the brightest in the business, and I’m honored to call each and every one a colleague. Today is, of course, bittersweet as this company has been my life for the bulk of my working career. I can look back with pride at all that we have accomplished together. It has been a challenging year for all of us as we have made tough but necessary decisions to position Intel for the current market dynamics. I am forever grateful for the many colleagues around the world who I have worked with as part of the Intel family," Gelsinger said in a statement.
Congrats to Gelsinger on a long and storied career, and we genuinely wish him the best in retirement.
