I feel like this is a mistake. Pat's strategy is aggressive but what the company needs.<p>Intel's stock is jumping at this announcement, but I look at it as a bad signal for Intel 18a. If 18a was looking to be a smash hit then I don't think Pat gets retired. If 18a is a success then it is an even more short-sighted decision by the board.<p>What this likely means is two-fold:<p>1. Intel 18a is being delayed further and/or there are significant issues that will hamstring performance.<p>2. Pat is/was unwilling to split the foundry and design business / be part of a M&A but the board wants to do one or the other.<p>If 18a is not ready I think the best case scenario for Intel is a merger with AMD. The US Govt would probably co-sign on it for national security concerns overriding the fact that it creates an absolute monopoly on x86 processors. The moat of the two companies together would give the new combined company plenty of time to ramp up their fabs.
I worked for 3 months for Intel. I can genuinely say that there is no saving that company. Recently, they are hiring many PhDs from various US universities (particularly Indians) to try to compensate (they offer generous stocks and are hiring like crazy right now). There are two major problems I saw: lack of genuine interest in fabs (most people are there for the Intel name and then leave or in the case of Indians, they are there for Visa purposes. Mind you, we were not allowed to hire people from China since Intel is subject to Export laws). The biggest problem by far is lack of talent. Most of the talent I know is either at Apple or Facebook/Google, including those trained in hardware. Intel is bound to crumble, so I hope we as taxpayers don't foot the bill. There was unwillingness to innovate and almost everyone wanted to maintain the status quo. This might work in traditional manufacturing (think tennis rackets, furniture...), but fabs must improve their lithography manufacturing nodes or they get eaten by the competition
Difficult to see how this is anything other than a failure. I had high hopes when Gelsinger returned, but it seems that BK had done too much damage and Gelsinger didn't really get a grip on things. One of the things I heard that really highlighted the failure of this recovery was that BK had let Intel balloon in all sorts of ways that needed to be pared back and refocused, but head count under Gelsinger didn't just stay static but continued to significantly grow. It's no good giving the same politically poisonous, under-delivering middle management more and more resources to fail at the same job. They really need to clear house in a spectacular way but I'm not sure who could even do that at this point.
The market seems to think this is great news. I disagree strongly here, but I can see why traders and potentially the board thought this was the right move.<p>A lot of hate for Pat Gelsinger on Reddit and YouTube from armchair experts who don't really grasp the situation Intel were in or what was needed to turn the ship around, so if he was pushed it seems like it might be to pacify the (not particularly informed) YouTube/gamer community and bump the share price. That's all speculation, though.<p>I'd be interested to see who Intel intends to get to run the company in his place, as that would signal which audience they're trying to keep happy here (if any).
Gelsinger retires before Intel Foundry spin is ready. This means trouble.<p>Intel invested tens of billions into A20 and A18 nodes, but it has not paid off yet. News about yield seemed promising. Massive investments have been made. If somebody buys Intel foundries now, they pay one dollar and take debt + subsidies. Intel can write off the debt but don't get potential rewards.<p>Foundry is the most interesting part of Intel. It's where everything is happening despite all the risk.
Sad to see Gelsinger go, but despite the churn, I don't think Intel is doomed. At worst, per their most recent Q3 results, I see $150Bn in assets and $4Bn in outstanding stock, and I see the US Gov (both incoming and outgoing) gearing up for a long war against China where Intel would be an asset of national importance.<p>My back of envelope calculation says Intel should be about $35 a share (150/4). If they stumble when they report Q4, I think the US Gov will twist some arms to make sure that fresh ideas make it onto the board of directors, and perhaps even make Qualcomm buy them.<p>I do think that Intel need to ditch some of their experiments like Mobileye. Its great (essential) to try and "rebalance their portfolio" away from server/pc chips by trying new businesses, but Mobileye hasnt grown very much.
Latest story from Bloomberg confirms "He was given the option to retire or be removed, and chose to announce the end of his career at Intel"
<a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/intel-ceo-gelsinger-leaves-chipmaker-140147477.html" rel="nofollow">https://finance.yahoo.com/news/intel-ceo-gelsinger-leaves-ch...</a>
Dear Intel Executive Search Team,<p>Hi! CEOing has always been a hobby of mine, but with the recent news, I thought this would be a great opportunity for us to synergize.<p>Sure, I don’t have much experience in the chip making world but I did buy a Pentium when I built my own computer. I also have never run a multinational company but I visited several other countries on a Disney cruise.<p>Let me lay it out- you would get a dynamic new CEO at a fraction of the going market rate, and I’d get to take my Chief Executiving skills to the next level.<p>Let’s do this together!<p>You can reply here and let me know if you’re interested.
I am amazed -- stunned -- how many people here seem to think that Gelsinger was the right person for the job, but wronged by the people who pre-dated him (BK?!) or the CHIPS act (?!) or other conditions somehow out of his control.<p>Gelsinger was -- emphatically -- the wrong person for the job: someone who had been at Intel during its glory days and who obviously believed in his heart that he -- and he alone! -- could return the company to its past. That people fed into this messianic complex by viewing him as "the return of the engineer" was further problematic. To be clear: when Gelsinger arrived in 2021, the company was in deep crisis. It needed a leader who could restore it to technical leadership, but could do so by making some tough changes (namely, the immediate elimination of the dividend and a very significant reduction in head count). In contrast, what Gelsinger did was the worst of all paths: allowed for a dividend to be paid out for far (FAR!) too long and never got into into really cutting the middle management undergrowth. Worst of all, things that WERE innovative at Intel (e.g., Tofino) were sloppily killed, destroying the trust that Intel desperately needs if it is to survive.<p>No one should count Intel out (AMD's resurrection shows what's possible here!), but Intel under Gelsinger was an unmitigated disaster -- and a predictable one.
Intel has had some big failures (or missed opportunities) over the years. Just going from memory - Pentium 4 architecture, not recognizing market opportunities with ARM, Itanium, AMD beating them to 64 bits on x86, AMD beating them to chiplets and high number of PCIe lanes with EPYC, poor battery life (generally) on laptops. The innovations from Apple with Apple Silicon (ARM) and AMD with EPYC make Intel look like they're completely lost. That's before we even touch on what RISC-V might do to them. It seems like the company has a long history of complacency and hubris.
Not an insider, but this doesn't seem good. I more or less agreed with every call Intel's made over the past few years, and was bullish on 18A. I liked that Pat was an engineer. His interim replacements don't seem to have that expertise.<p>Intel wasn't doing great to start, but Pat put it on the path, potentially, towards greatness. Now even that is in major jeopardy.
I am perhaps one of Pat's biggest fan. Was in tears when I knew he is back at Intel [1];<p>><i>"Notable absent from that list is he fired Pat Gelsinger. Please just bring him back as CEO." - 2012 on HN, when Paul Otellini Retired.</i><p>><i>"The only one who may have a slim chance to completely transform Intel is Pat Gelsinger, if Andy Grove saved Intel last time, it will be his apprentice to save Intel again. Unfortunately given what Intel has done to Pat during his last tenure, I am not sure if he is willing to pick up the job, especially the board's Chairman is Bryant, not sure how well they go together. But we know Pat still loves Intel, and I know a lot of us miss Pat." [2] - June, 2018</i><p>I am sad to read this. As I wrote [2] only a few hours ago about how the $8B from Chip ACT is barely anything if US / Intel wants to compete with TSMC.<p>Unfortunately there were lot of things that didn't go to plan. Or from my reading of it was out of his control. Cutting Dividends was a No No from Board until late. Big Cut of headcount wasn't allowed until too late. Basically he was tasked to turn the ship around rapidly, not allow to rock the ship too much all while it has leaky water at the bottom. And I will again, like I have already wrote in [1], point the finger at the board.<p>My reading of this is that it is a little too late to save Intel, both as foundry and chip making. Having Pat "<i>retired</i>" would likely mean the board is now planning to sell Intel off since Pat would likely be the biggest opponents to this idea.<p>At less than $100B I am sure there are plenty of interested buyers for various part of Intel. Broadcomm could be one. Qualcomm or may be even AMD. I am just not sure who will take the Foundry or if the Foundry will be a separate entity.<p>I dont want Pat and Intel to end like this. But the world is unforgiving and cruel. I have been watching TSMC grow and cheer leading them in 2010 before 99.99% of the internet even heard of its name and I know their game far too well. So I know competing against TSMC is a task that is borderline impossible in many aspect. But I would still wanted to see Pat bring Intel back to leading edge again. The once almightily Intel.....<p>Farewell and Goodbye Pat. Thank You for everything you have done.<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25765443">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25765443</a><p>[2] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42293541">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42293541</a>
Pat returned as CEO in 2021. I don't think that 3 years is enough time to clean out the internal rot that has led Intel to where it is today and a lot of problems have been in motion for a while. Short-term this might be better for Intel but this move lacks long term vision. Intel also just got a big hand-out from the government that would've kept them moving in the right direction regardless of what CEO is leading the pack.
A few years, Pat said Intel had internally rebuilt their "Grovian execution Engine". I found those words empty, a far cry from Andy Grove's hard decision to dump memory in favor of microprocessors. Andy Grove's decisions made Intel, Intel, not "execution".<p>It's unfortunate the situation is beyond almost anyone's grasp but I wonder if Pat should have talked less, and done more.
Unfortunately not surprising, looking at the past year or so.<p>When he took over, I remember the enthusiasm and optimism, not only in business, but in hacker circles also. It's a pity it didn't work out. I wonder if it is even possible to save Intel (not trying to imply that "if Gelsinger can't do it, than no one can", just wondering if Intel is just doomed, regardless of what their management does).
I got to meet and interact with Pat a few times while he was the CEO of VMware. I really liked him and his approach to things. He has done the best he could with the hand that was dealt to him.
I am old enough to remember when AMD was nowhere, and Intel was the only game in town for both consumer and server chips, laptop and desktop. I think it was 2011.<p>Then 2013 rolled around and I built a desktop with an AMD processor, because it was dirt cheap. I remember people saying that they were excited and looking forward to the upcoming AMD architectures and roadmap. I couldn't understand how AMD could possibly have come from behind to beat Intel.<p>Realistically, you just need to come up with a good roadmap, get good people, get the resources, execute.<p>Roadmap is good, people - not so sure about this one, resources - seem a little low, execution - seems hampered by too many cooks. If Intel broke up into smaller companies and their new leading edge chip design group had 500 good people, I honestly think they would have a better shot. So I think we are seeing what makes the most sense, Intel must die and let the phoenixes rise from the ashes.<p>Fast forward to 2024/2025, and remember, anything is possible if AMD beat 2011 Intel.
Is this not a bit too short a time for results to show yet? Turning a ship too many times would just result in it spinning in circles around the same position
The CEO of a public company is a glorified cheerleader. Doing the right things is half the job, <i>convincing people</i> you are doing the right things is the other half. Considering Intel's share price dropped 61% under Gelsinger's tenure, no matter the work he did towards the first half, it's pretty clear he thoroughly failed at the second. They desperately need someone who will drive back investor confidence in the company, and fast.
From a customer's perspective:
NO, I don't like the BIG-little core architecture of CPUs on desktop platforms, and I don't enjoy the quality issues of the 13-14th gen CPUs; I also don't like the lack of software support for middling performing GPUs. I used to like intel's SSD, but the division was sold.
18A is an absolute disaster, it's investor lawsuit worthy.<p>When the news came out that 20A was canceled the spin was 18A was so advanced that they no longer needed an in-between node.<p>NOPE, what happened was that 18A was a failure, and they renamed 20A to 18A.
Here are 2 things I have noticed that seem obvious weaknesses:<p>1. Looking at the CyberMonday and BlackFriday deals, I see that the 12900K and 14900* series CPUs are what is being offered on the Intel side. Meanwhile AMD has released newer chips. So Intel has issues with either yield, pricing or other barriers to adoption of their latest.<p>2. The ARC GPUs are way behind; it seems obvious to me that a way to increase usage and sales is to simply add more VRAM to the GPUs - Nvidia limits the 4090 to 24GB; so if Intel shipped a GPU with 48 or 64GB VRAM, more people would buy those just to have the extra VRAM. It would spur more development, more usage, more testing and ultimately result in ARC being a better choice for LLMs, image processing, etc.
Gelsinger seemed well connected to Washington / the democratic administration in particular and the CHIPS act seemed to be designed to save/bail out Intel.<p>Perhaps this is a fall out from the election.
If AMD can come back from the brink of bankruptcy, then Intel can too. I believe.<p>[Edit]: Though it might have to be that Intel literally has to come to the brink of bankruptcy in order for that comeback to happen.
It seems really strange to me that the CEOs of two major companies have announced immediate retirements on the same day (the other being Carlos Tavaris of Stellantis).
This is not good. We already know what happened when CFO took over. It was a time when Intel totaly lost control. They are gona get bought for penies. OMG<p>Instead of saying to AMD they will be in the rearview mirror, they should have been paranoid. Not do stupid GPUs. and destroy others where it mattered
Does Nvidia use Intel foundry? No.<p>Does Apple use Intel foundry? No.<p>The two largest fabless companies in the world never used, and have no plans to use Intel foundries.<p>"Intel foundry" as a service is a fiction, and will remain so. Intel can't get others to use their weird custom software tooling.
Text book CEO.<p>He came, he did all these things, he left (likely with golden parachutes): <a href="https://kevinkruse.com/the-ceo-and-the-three-envelopes/" rel="nofollow">https://kevinkruse.com/the-ceo-and-the-three-envelopes/</a>
Full disclosure, the day Bob Swan announced his exit was the day I purchased Intel stock.<p>Pat had the mandate from both the board and the market to do whatever he deemed necessary to bring Intel back to the forefront of semiconductor manufacturing and a leading edge node. Frankly, I don't think he used that mandate the way he should have. Hindsight is 20/20 and all, but he probably could have used that mandate to eliminate a lot of the middle management layer in the company and refocus on pure engineering. From the outside it seems like there's something rotten in that layer as the ship hasn't been particularly responsive to his steering, even with the knowledge of the roughly 4-5 year lead time that a company like Intel has to deal with. Having been there for so long though, a lot of his friends were probably in that layer and I can empathize with him being a bit over confident and believing he could turn it around while letting everyone keep their jobs.<p>The market reaction really does highlight how what's good for Intel long term as a business is not necessarily what the market views as good.<p>Folks in this thread are talking about a merger with AMD or splitting the foundry/design business. I doubt AMD wants this. They're relatively lean and efficient at this point and turning Intel around is a huge project that doesn't seem worth the effort when they're firing on all cylinders. Splitting the business is probably great for M&A bankers, but it's hard to see how that would actually help the US keep a leading semi-conductor manufacturer on shore. That business would likely end up just going the same way as GlobalFoundries and we all know that didn't really work out.<p>The most bizarre thing to me is that they've appointed co-CEO's that are both basically CFO's. That doesn't smell of success to me.<p>I think one of the more interesting directions Intel could go is if Nvidia leveraged their currently enormous stock value and moved in for an acquisition of the manufacturing division. (Quick glance shows a market cap of 3.4 trillion. I knew it was high, but still, wow.) Nvidia has the stock price and cash to support the purchase and rather uniquely, has the motive with the GPU shortage to have their own manufacturing arm. Plus, they've already been rumored to be making plays in the general compute space, but in ARM and RISC-V, not x86. Personally, Jensen is one of the few CEO's that I can imagine having the right tempo and tenor for taming that beast.<p>I'm curious what others think of the Nvidia acquisition idea.
Feels like the wrong move. Turning a chip company around has timescales of a decade. Getting rid of a CEO 3 years in simply means no turnaround is going to happen.
Pat was at the helm for just a few years and has already been sent to the guillotine.<p>Maybe it isn’t wise that the USA dump billions into private companies that can’t even get their own house in order.<p>I wouldn’t be surprised if the next CEO installed by the board will be hellbent on prepping INTC for sale. A few of the board of directors of INTC are from private investment firms.
Gelsinger got screwed by the CHIPS Act.<p>The promise of state backing for a US champion SC fab was taken seriously by Gelsinger, who went all-in in trying to remake Intel as TSMC 2.0. But the money turned out to be way too late and far more conditional than Gelsinger thought. This is bad news for Intel, bad news for US industrial policy
Register article: <a href="https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/02/intel_gelsinger_leave/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/02/intel_gelsinger_leave...</a><p>"At least he'll have company as he joins 15K colleagues headed for the door"<p>Heyoo!
You always hope as a technical person to see an engineer running a company. This move, in these circumstances do little to inspire confidence for engineers occupying c-suite positions. I had high hopes for Pat, given his previous track record. But it appears the damage to Intel had already been done.
Intel either go the IDM route or split the company into two. Intel can't afford to fuck around and find out.<p>AMD is gaining ground on x86 without the burden of fab, and Apple has demonstrated that desktop ARM is viable. Nvidia is showing the world that GPUs can handle parallel computing better.
Echoing the sentiment this is a huge mistake.<p>Something I was thinking about the other day: All the mega successful chip companies at the moment: TSMC, Nvidia, Samsung - are all lead by founders or family of founders. It got me wondering that if you really want to innovate in the most innovative industry in the world, you need more skin in the game than stock options. Gelsinger was the closest thing Intel had to a founder-leader, someone who deeply cared about the company and its legacy beyond what they paid him, and was willing to make tough decisions rather than maintain the status quo until his options vest.<p>I wonder if this is the nail in the coffin.
Well their stock is already in the dumps, they can't do much worse than they already have been.<p>Divesting from their discrete GPUs just as they were starting to become a viable value option was one of their most recent asinine decisions. No idea why they didn't try test the market with a high RAM 64GB+ card before bowing out to see how well they'd do. Nvidia's too busy printing money to add more RAM to their consumer GPUs, they'd have the cheap GPU VRAM market all to themselves.
These large troubled incumbents seems to have infinite lives to linger on towards a slow death path destroying value in their journey. Like Boeing, why does intel hangs around taking up space, opportunities, resources, one failed attempt after another failed attempt instead of making space for newer ideas, organizations? at this point is so clear these public companies are just milking the moat their predecessors built around them and the good will (or is it naive will) of their new investors who continue to pour money buying out the ones jumping ship
Plenty of people here talk about the mistakes from Intel CEOs. But do they really have so much influence over the success of new production lines? Or is this maybe caused by some group of middle-management that backed each other's ass the last 10 years? How high is the possibility that the production problems with new nodes are mostly bad luck? I haven't seen anything trying analyse and quantise those questions.
Break their fabs up, make one of those focus on GPUs, another on NPUs, so FPGAs, and robotics. Some will die some will yield new "Intel's."
I’ve heard rumors he was viewed as a lightweight, or at least not as much of a serious engineer as Morris Chang was in his 60s, but even still his tenure was surprisingly short…
Stock moving up slightly? In the context of the last week even it seems like Wall Street mostly doesn't care either way.<p>At this stage in Intel's life I think having a financier overseeing the company might actually be a good move. Engineering leadership is of course critical across the business, but they company has historically paid large dividends and is now moving into a stage where it's removing those pay outs, taking on debt and managing large long-term investments across multiple parts of the business.<p>Someone needs to be able to manage those investments and communicate that to Wall Street/Investors in a way that makes sense and doesn't cause any surprises.<p>Pat's error isn't that Intel revenues are slowing or that things are struggling, it's the fact he continued to pay dividends and pretend it wasn't a huge issue... until it was.
Eh. Pat hasn't seemed to be doing anything special. Presided over a bunch of hiring and firing (pointlessly), plowing money into fabs like anyone else would, often misleads during presentations, hasn't managed Intel's cash very well...<p>I have to agree with a few others, don't really see why people looked up to him. Seems like a pretty mediocre CEO overall.<p>I also, personally, do not actually see the problem with a financial CEO. Ultimately I don't believe technical acumen is that important to the decisions a CEO makes - they should be relying on subordinates to correctly inform them of the direction and prospects of the company and act accordingly.<p>I am concerned about Intel's long term prospects - obviously he wouldn't be leaving if everything was looking up, IMO.
What timescale are we looking at to decide if building foundries and manufacturing chips in the States is a good idea? There's an argument that there aren't nearly enough skilled workers to do high tech manufacturing here. Didn't TSMC also struggle to hire enough skilled workers in Arizona?
Only CEOs get to press release their firings as something else: retirement, wanting to spend more time with family, voluntarily leaving etc.<p>He was sacked. The board fired him. Tell it like it is.<p>What does this mean for Intel? I think they’re too important to get bought or broken up because they have fabs in the US. They’re like Boeing in that sense. Or a big bank. They’re too big (strategically important) for the US to let them fail. But maybe they’ll get bought by another US company or investor. I dunno.
Has Intel ever made a production chip using their own EUV process?
They keep moving the goal post so they'll be state of the art when they get there - currently aiming for "18A" with high NA using the absolute latest equipment from ASML. But I don't think they've demonstrated mastery of EUV at any node yet.
I don't know why everybody is talking nicely of him and being boohoo.<p>The guy thumped religious stuff on his twitter, didn't acknowledge competition, didn't reform company culture and was left in the dust.<p>Intel is better off without him.
> Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) today announced that CEO Pat Gelsinger retired from the company after a distinguished 40-plus-year career and has stepped down from the board of directors, effective Dec. 1, 2024<p>Is it a "he retired" or a "we retired him"?