April 1, 2025
By Bob O'Donnell
Taking a tech industry titan back to the heights from which it used to reign is not an easy task for anyone. Just ask Pat Gelsinger, former CEO and multi-decade veteran of Intel who was picked to lead the turnaround that the company realized it needed a bit over four years ago. Gelsinger, who was widely seen as the perfect choice for the role at the time, put together a plan to get both the company’s products and semiconductor manufacturing prowess back on track. He arguably made solid progress on both goals. Unfortunately, the company’s board of directors—and the public markets—didn’t feel like the necessary improvements were happening fast enough, and he departed the company back in December of last year.
Fast forward a few months and at the company’s appropriately titled Vision conference, newly appointed CEO Lip-Bu Tan took the stage in the first major appearance in his new role to describe his vision for where he wants the company to go. Not surprisingly, it’s not radically different from the plans that Gelsinger initiated, but there are some important modifications that should drive the kind of faster changes that tech industry watchers—and the public markets—are hoping to see.
Like Gelsinger, Lip-Bu Tan is a Silicon Valley veteran, having started a successful venture capital fund (Walden International), served on many tech company boards and, most notably, worked as CEO at Cadence, a leader in EDA chip design software. While at Cadence, he orchestrated a very successful turnaround during his 12-year tenure. His experience there made him extremely well suited to this new role at Intel because of Cadence’s critical role in both chip design and manufacturing, as well as IP, product and technology leadership.
At Intel, of course, the stakes are significantly higher. For over 50 years, the company has been seen as a tech industry leader driving not only some of the most important computing advances for client devices, servers, and the cloud but, until recently, the leading developments in chip manufacturing as well. Recognizing this—and building on the basic outline that Gelsinger started—Lip-Bu Tan made it clear that he believes Intel has an essential role to play in new semiconductor products and as a chip manufacturing foundry for both its own chips as well as for other major chip design firms.
It’s a big, hard, long-term goal—and one that’s certainly generated some healthy debate—but ultimately, I believe, the correct one for the company. Especially given the geo-political tensions that continue to concern many tech industry observers, there’s no question that the US needs a big, important player in chip manufacturing, and Intel is the only real option. To put it succinctly, Intel and its semiconductor manufacturing efforts are simply too important to fail—or go away. Now, it may be that Intel spins off the foundry business into an independent entity at a later time, but for now, it seems clear—and Lip-Bu Tan emphasized—that it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
The continued efforts in chip manufacturing are particularly important and timely, because the company is finally on the verge of regaining a leadership role in advanced process technologies. The forthcoming 18A process—still targeted for release at the end of this year with Intel’s Panther Lake CPUs for notebook PCs—offers several important advancements, including backside power delivery and RibbonFET transistors, that are currently advantages unique to Intel. Together, the two should enable Intel to produce chips that are more performant and more efficient than chips made on TSMC’s 2nm process technology.
The big remaining question for the foundry business, however, is whether or not the company can attract other big chip designers—think Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Marvel, etc.—to commit to significant volumes. Right now, most of them are apparently kicking the tires on both 18A and the future 14A process the company previously announced, but a big test for the new CEO will be closing the deals. With a foundry-focused event scheduled for the end of April, expectations are bound to be high for some news on that front.
On the product side, Intel’s current roadmap looks pretty good by all accounts, but the question will be how it advances moving forward. In addition, there are lots of questions about what projects Lip-Bu Tan will discontinue, start up again, or initiate. His Vision speech gave a few clues with discussions on the critical importance of AI acceleration, robotics, and more. He also described how he wanted to focus on Intel’s culture, making it once again an engineering-focused company and one that has the nimbleness and speed of a startup. All of these are lofty goals, but the real test will be how well he can execute on those cultural and product goals.
Additionally, although products are important, the other critical factor is for Intel to regain the confidence of the industry. The last few years have been challenging for the company, and the uncertainty around the company’s future has arguably had a negative impact on tech industry trends overall, particularly for the PC market. If Lip-Bu Tan can restore confidence in Intel then that will be an extremely big step forward. In fact, that’s likely the first impact that the new CEO can make...and hopes are high that he’s the right person to do that.
Ultimately, the question will boil down to how Lip-Bu Tan’s vision for what he described as the “new Intel” can help guide it through what will undoubtedly still be a tough few years. The question isn’t just what kind of products it can create and what kinds of business it can book in its foundry business, but also how the company redefines itself in this new AI computing era in which many of the company’s traditional strengths aren’t as important as they used to be. The tools are clearly available, and the motivation seems apparent. So, let’s hope that the “new” Intel can reclaim its role as a critical industry innovator and tech business leader.
Here's a link to the original column: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/new-intel-ceo-lays-out-company-vision-bob-o-donnell-7tadc
Bob O’Donnell is the president and chief analyst of TECHnalysis Research, LLC a market research firm that provides strategic consulting and market research services to the technology industry and professional financial community. You can follow him on LinkedIn at Bob O’Donnell or on Twitter @bobodtech.
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