Anirudh Fireside Chats with Jensen and Lip-Bu at CadenceLIVE 2025

Anirudh (Cadence President and CEO) had two fireside chats during CadenceLIVE 2025, the first with Jensen Huang (Founder and CEO of NVIDIA) to kick off the show, and later in the day with Lip-Bu Tan (CEO of Intel). Of course Jensen and Lip-Bu also turn up for other big vendor shows but I was reminded that there is something special about Cadence and Anirudh’s relationship with both CEOs. Cadence and Jensen/NVIDIA are mutual customers and partners in providing services. Cadence’s latest hardware accelerator (the Millennium M2000 Supercomputer) is built on NVIDIA Blackwell and they collaborate on datacenter design technologies and drug design technologies. On the other hand, as Cadence’s former CEO, Lip-Bu  rescued it from a slump, much as he now aims to do with Intel, before handing over the reins to his protégé (Anirudh). Lip-Bu hugged Anirudh when he came on stage which says a lot about the close relationship between these two leaders. Cadence is tight with two of the world’s top semis, notwithstanding Intel’s current trials. Good for Cadence and for Anirudh!

Fireside chat with Jensen

Too much material here to summarize in a short section, instead I’ll select a few highlights. First, though officially announced in Anirudh’s following keynote, Cadence’s new AI accelerator, the Millennium M2000 Supercomputer, was revealed in this talk. This accelerator is based on the NVIDIA Blackwell platform and Jensen sprang a surprise by ordering 10 NVL72 Millennium M2000s on the spot. He’s not just happy that Cadence built their machine on his product, he also wants to build the Cadence product into the NVIDIA datacenter in support of their joint digital twin initiatives.

Now imagine how far digital twins can permeate into every aspect of industrial design. The concept is already big in logic chip design through platforms like Cadence’s Palladium and Protium systems. In the EDA world we don’t call these platforms digital twins but Jensen does – NVIDIA has been using Palladium for years to design GPUs. Now platforms like Millennium can extend design support out to non-electronic domains through AI on top of principled simulation: datacenters, wind tunnels and turbines, factory design and automation, drug discovery and design, the possibilities are endless.

Which leads to a question – if all design is going to move in this direction, what infrastructure will support all this AI and compute? Datacenters certainly but we’re talking about datacenters at hyperscale. AI factories – Jensen says they are now building Gigawatt factories. The capital required for such a factory is $60B – at the same level as Boeing’s revenues for a year. Few enterprises can make investments at that scale; most will be using digital twins as a service to design their products, drugs, and manufacturing systems. Which makes talk of sovereign AI less hyperbolic that it might have appeared. There are moves in this direction already in the US, in Japan and in the UK.

You could argue that this is just fear of missing out (FOMO) but it’s now global FOMO. The success or failure of enterprises, even country GDPs can swing on being ready or being late to the party. AI has indeed made these interesting times to live in.

Fireside Chat with Lip-Bu

I’m far from the first and far from the most qualified to offer an opinion on Lip-Bu taking the CEO position at Intel but this is my article, so here’s my opinion. That Intel is struggling is not news, and I’m sure a comfortable choice for many would have been a long-time semi or foundry exec, but I’m also guessing that the board decided it was time to be bold. Lip-Bu has served on the Intel board, he turned around Cadence from a not dissimilar slump, and he has an enviable reputation in running his own venture fund (40+ years, over 500 startups, and 145 IPOs). He is also well connected to a lot of influential people in tech, rated on board memberships and connection to money. Not a bad start.

I confess I have a bias to seeing Intel regain its design mojo (my domain). I’m not qualified to speak to the foundry side – I’ll leave commentary there to others. What I heard in the fireside chat is consistent with what I have heard of Lip-Bu’s management style at Cadence. A big focus on product and delighting the customer by going the extra mile. He is already trimming layers of management so that he hears directly from R&D and sales. He also intends to instill a culture of humility both towards customers and towards each other (quite a change for Intel?).

He intends to continue his VC work, not as a sideline but as a very active channel to spot big waves as they approach. And to stay in touch with the startup culture, which he wants to bring back to the company. An ability to move fast in promising directions with a minimum of approval layers and oversight.

We all see a trend to purpose-built silicon, especially around AI. Lip-Bu believes that Intel must adapt to this need, not only to delight but also to build trust. They must embrace opportunities for custom development with big customers. In my paltry knowledge of foundry opportunities I know that Intel is well established in advanced packaging. This is an area they have potential to differentiate.

For EDA/SDA suppliers he suggests there is plenty of opportunity to help. In tooling he wants to see Intel supporting more compatibility with customer preferences, meaning support across the board wherever needed. And I’m sure he will be looking for out-of-the-box thinking from partners, opportunities not just to polish existing solutions but to truly explore multi-way opportunities – customer, Intel, foundry, EDA/IP supplier.

Opportunities to be bold everywhere, not just for Intel but also for their partners.

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