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Gelsinger “retires”

Intel CEO Forced Out After Board Grew Frustrated With Progress​


(Bloomberg) — Intel Corp. (INTC) Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger was forced out after the board lost confidence in his plans to turn around the iconic chipmaker, adding to turmoil at one of the pioneers of the technology industry.

The clash came to a head last week when Gelsinger met with the board about the company’s progress on winning back market share and narrowing the gap with Nvidia Corp., according to people familiar with the matter. He was given the option to retire or be removed, and chose to announce the end of his career at Intel, said the people, who declined to be identified discussing proceedings that were not made public.



 
Daniel Nenni said:
I still say that Hock Tan should acquire Intel and pivot the hell out of the company. Hock could run a foundry, absolutely.
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Hock quickly sells off or shuts down every underperforming (low margin) group he acquires. If he acquires Intel, IFS would be the first to go based on his track record.

I'm interested to know why you and others here might think Hock would keep and run IFS.
 
Daniel Nenni said:

Intel CEO Forced Out After Board Grew Frustrated With Progress​


(Bloomberg) — Intel Corp. (INTC) Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger was forced out after the board lost confidence in his plans to turn around the iconic chipmaker, adding to turmoil at one of the pioneers of the technology industry.

The clash came to a head last week when Gelsinger met with the board about the company’s progress on winning back market share and narrowing the gap with Nvidia Corp., according to people familiar with the matter. He was given the option to retire or be removed, and chose to announce the end of his career at Intel, said the people, who declined to be identified discussing proceedings that were not made public.



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Trying to close the gap with Nvidia at this point is a complete waste of time
 
Another question related to a breakup - Will an independent IFS lose a substantial portion of its biggest customer (Intel Products)? I assume an acquisition of IFS would have to clear up this question first. Once again, industry events favor TSMC.
 
delong.height said:
that doesn't play well for 18A potential customers, because PG represent 18A. It's not good for them to oust him out when the technology isn't in HVM yet.
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Is the progress of 18A really as positive as claimed? Intel reported a D0 number of <0.4 three months ago. Additionally, several forum members have mentioned that the progress of 18A is on track.

I’m curious if the Board recognized that the actual progress of 18A is underperforming, which might explain their decision to fire Pat immediately.

If the yield and timeline of 18A don't meet expectations, Pat will undoubtedly be held responsible, especially since he previously stated that he bet Intel’s entire future on 18A.
 
Daniel Nenni said:
I still say that Hock Tan should acquire Intel and pivot the hell out of the company. Hock could run a foundry, absolutely.

The GSA awards are on Thursday. Hock Tan will receive the Morris Chang Excellence Award. I will visit the Intel table to see what the temperature is for sure.
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Hock is 71 years old. While Pat is 63. Is it really a good idea?
 
Maximus said:
Is the progress of 18A really as positive as claimed? Intel reported a D0 number of <0.4 three months ago. Additionally, several forum members have mentioned that the progress of 18A is on track.

I’m curious if the Board recognized that the actual progress of 18A is underperforming, which might explain their decision to fire Pat immediately.

If the yield and timeline of 18A don't meet expectations, Pat will undoubtedly be held responsible, especially since he previously stated that he bet Intel’s entire future on 18A.
Click to expand...
Either Pat was fired due to other reason than 18A, or 18A schedule is really delayed. My guessing only.
 
Daniel Nenni said:
Overly optimistic behavior at the C level does not always work. Especially for a company with old school culture. An Intel pivot is coming, absolutely.

I just don't see why companies fire CEO's without replacements unless one of the CO CEOs will take it. In that case I do not think this will end well.
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Seems to me CEO retiring effective immediately is not a retirement, it is not a typical firing. It is a "I cant stand to be in the same room with you" or "we don't want you even on the site anymore". .... Unless they are breaking the company up immediately, I would expect a Single CEO in a month or two... Lets see who it ends up being.

It is also possible that this has been in the works for a long time and the parties were just working out final buyout package.

We will hear soon enough what really happened. Yet another good IEDM conversation topic!

We should hear about the roadmap changes soon as well.
 
Daniel Nenni said:
Who are possible replacements from the semiconductor industry?
Click to expand...
I've been wondering about Stacy Smith.
Daniel Nenni said:
I still say that Hock Tan should acquire Intel and pivot the hell out of the company. Hock could run a foundry, absolutely.
Click to expand...
I think Tan is too smart to take on leading edge fabs. Broadcom (Avago) certainly has had an exciting history, but I think Intel is too much for even Tan to swallow.
Daniel Nenni said:
The GSA awards are on Thursday. Hock Tan will receive the Morris Chang Excellence Award. I will visit the Intel table to see what the temperature is for sure.
Click to expand...
It wouldn't surprise me if the Intel table was silent, especially this soon and with someone as connected as you are.
 
MKWVentures said:
Seems to me CEO retiring effective immediately is not a retirement, it is not a typical firing. It is a "I cant stand to be in the same room with you" or "we don't want you even on the site anymore".
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I'm wondering if there will be a retirement party for Pat. I suspect not.
 
Erik F said:
Trying to close the gap with Nvidia at this point is a complete waste of time
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Of course, but PG had almost four years to make progress and explain why it would be so slow.

Again a problem with not firing incompetent managers, Brian Krzanich hired Raja Koduri in 2017 after what sounds like a failure at AMD, including from Koduri's explanation, and he left Intel in the same month the next generation Rialto Bridge GPGPUs for datacenters was canceled.

Trying to recover from March 2023 wasn't long enough to get results, but again PG failed to manage expectations in AI revenue, wasn't it a half billion dollar miss recently? Which also includes the not yet completely failed Habana Labs acquisition and their Gaudi chips, a Bob Swan acquisition in 2019, and it's a bad sign the founders left in September.

AMD is not doing well in AI, but it is making some AI money from desperation because Nvidia's output is TSMC prior capacity reservation constrained.

We've not been discussing HPC, but has PG does anything to fix that segment? It's not his fault the Aurora supercomputer was so late, Intel started declaring delays in 2017, but I understand that AMD focuses on this segment, which is less technically demanding than the current wild AI market, and has had significant success, if not much revenue compared to AI.
 
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If I was to guess, and be generous to Pat, I would guess that Pats vision for Intel will require significant and sustained capital investment over many years that the board does not have an appetite for. My guess is that high level of capital investment would be absolutely required if Intel is to become a champion in manufacturing again, and even then it's hardly a sure thing.

My view is and always has been that Intel will need to become a fabless company and that's a better path, but the deal with the US government seems to make this impossible. Pat probably made this deal on purpose to protect his vision. I am not sure if the board was on board with that or not. I bet Pat and the board weren't seeing eye to eye on it.

If I am right about this guess, then Pats vision is locked in but no Pat to execute. It could be a disaster in the making.

All of this is speculation.
 
Intel products has its own challenges but they can deal with that.

On foundry and Fabs: Intel Strategic planning has numbers for wafers needed, on what process and on what date. It includes external foundry customer commitments and Internal. It also has scenarios. TSMC has the ability to meet Intel needs if desired as well. So Intel just needs to close on what the fab needs are, Capex needs, and whether the board will approve it. My belief/model is that they need 52 and 62 IF they bring wafers home in 2026. Ohio Is only needed with 2nd generation of foundry demand increase (2028) and more wafers home. So they need to decide on those facts and numbers on demand. Decide the capex budget and move forward.

Hopefully a Fab JV will pop up to fix the financial mess so they don't have to keep selling office buildings.
 
MKWVentures said:
Intel products has its own challenges but they can deal with that.

On foundry and Fabs: Intel Strategic planning has numbers for wafers needed, on what process and on what date. It includes external foundry customer commitments and Internal. It also has scenarios. TSMC has the ability to meet Intel needs if desired as well. So Intel just needs to close on what the fab needs are, Capex needs, and whether the board will approve it. My belief/model is that they need 52 and 62 IF they bring wafers home in 2026. Ohio Is only needed with 2nd generation of foundry demand increase (2028) and more wafers home. So they need to decide on those facts and numbers on demand. Decide the capex budget and move forward.

Hopefully a Fab JV will pop up to fix the financial mess so they don't have to keep selling office buildings.
Click to expand...

Can Intel focus all its attention and resources on Oregon, Arizona, and Ireland? Even if additional fabs are needed, can they just build the new ones at those three sites? IMO, Intel doesn't have the luxury to spread out further to Ohio, Israel, and Germany.
 
Does Intel have a competitive edge vs all the other CPU designers (not just AMD) if they commit fully to TSMC? Now even Windows runs on Arm.
 
C-4 said:
Does Intel have a competitive edge vs all the other CPU designers (not just AMD) if they commit fully to TSMC? Now even Windows runs on Arm.
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Packaging tech appears to be one of Intel's stronger edges currently.

They still have an engineering culture problem in the design area: Look at their severely lackluster response to the multi-year Raptor Lake stability issues, and the botched Arrow Lake launch (premature launch with reviews not meeting Intel's internal expectations).

Intel is basically cooked at this point unless 18A and their next gen of processors combine to be an amazing success.

Even with that, I think Intel is in a cost and sales trap for most of their products: I think that the "cost floor" is only increasing over time for leading edge fabrication* of commodity products*. (High cost limited fab capacity mean you have to choose your products for sale carefully - which means ditching low margin items.)

This is compounded by the fact that regular "design" performance gains lately are so small ("Zen 5%", Arrow Lake treading water), why would customers bother upgrading and replacing as often as they used to. Intel can't be highly profitable or successful long term without dominating brand new market segments - of which AI is the latest missed opportunity.

..

*AMD and Intel have largely given up on sub $150 processors, and Nvidia and AMD are trying not to sell GPUs below ~ $300 and $200 respectively. Nvidia's CEO has made a lot of comments about Moore's Law being dead and transistor costs going up since around the 20nm era. Chiplets have pushed this problem back some years but you can only do so much with packaging to defer this problem.
 
hist78 said:
Can Intel focus all its attention and resources on Oregon, Arizona, and Ireland? Even if additional fabs are needed, can they just build the new ones at those three sites? IMO, Intel doesn't have the luxury to spread out further to Ohio, Israel, and Germany.
Click to expand...
Alternatively, they can accelerate a move out of Oregon to Ohio and Arizona to take advantage of wealthier state governments and better quality workforce.
 
almost wonders if this is a Christmas spoof :oops: It seems that the pressure on the BOD for revenue is so great that people are losing their minds.
 
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