After a little over three months, Intel has a new CEO to replace ousted former CEO Pat Gelsinger. Intel’s board announced that Lip-Bu Tan will begin as Intel CEO on March 18, taking over from interim co-CEOs David Zinsner and Michelle Johnston Holthaus.
Gelsinger was booted from the CEO position by Intel’s board on December 2 after several quarters of losses, rounds of layoffs, and canceled or spun-off side projects. Gelsinger sought to turn Intel into a foundry company that also manufactured chips for fabless third-party chip design companies, putting it into competition with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company(TSMC), Samsung, and others, a plan that Intel said it was still committed to when it let Gelsinger go.
Intel said that Zinsner would stay on as executive vice president and CFO, and Johnston Holthaus would remain CEO of the Intel Products Group, which is mainly responsible for Intel’s consumer products. These were the positions both executives held before serving as interim co-CEOs.
Tan was previously a member of Intel’s board from 2022 to 2024 and has been a board member for several other technology and chip manufacturing companies, including Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), and Cadence Design Systems.
Tan picks up the baton at a fraught time for Intel, which reported a loss of $18.76 billion in 2024, its first annual loss since 1986. Some of the company’s competitors, including the likes of Qualcomm and TSMC, have reportedly at least looked into buying or taking a stake in the company or its foundry business, something that would have been hard to imagine just a few years ago.
The company has a lot riding on its upcoming 18A manufacturing process, a rollout that Tan will now oversee. It’s the first cutting-edge manufacturing process that Intel is offering to potential third-party foundry customers, and it’s also meant to allow Intel to bring at least some of its own chip manufacturing back in-house. Recent Core Ultra CPUs and all Intel Arc GPUs have been made in whole or in part by TSMC.
Part of Intel’s turnaround is being funded by the US government, which passed the CHIPS Act in 2022 to funnel billions of dollars into domestic chip manufacturing. That law passed Congress with bipartisan support, but President Donald Trump recently called the law a “horrible, horrible thing,” stoking fears that the administration may cancel future funding or attempt to recover funding that has already been distributed.