Intel’s decision to hire a little-known semiconductor dealmaker as its chief executive has cheered investors who want an outsider to turn around the troubled chipmaker.
The US group announced on Wednesday that Lip-Bu Tan, who joined Intel’s board in 2022 but resigned last year, had been chosen to replace Pat Gelsinger.
Wall Street welcomed the move by sending Intel’s shares up nearly 15 per cent this week. But the decision came after a deliberative process, with chair Frank Yeary saying the board had met with “many strong leaders” before settling on the Malaysia-born, Mandarin-speaking, MIT-educated executive — whose interest in the job was an open secret.
“If he were the board’s first choice, they would have named him in December [when Gelsinger abruptly stepped down],” said one former Intel executive. “After he left the board, my assumption is they looked elsewhere for a CEO and returned to Lip-Bu Tan because they exhausted their options.”
A major part of Tan’s appeal was that “he wasn’t part of Intel”, said Patrick Moorhead, a chip consultant at Moor Insights & Strategy. “This is what the markets want: they want an outsider, they want somebody to come in and make quick changes.”
Intel declined to comment.
Tan’s daunting in-tray involves articulating a plan for an iconic American company that just five years ago was the world’s most valuable chipmaker, but whose shares have fallen more than 50 per cent since, with the company’s market capitalisation now at $102bn.
Intel has lost ground to PC chip rivals, missed the opportunity in AI data centres snatched by Nvidia and AMD, and is under pressure to sell off its lossmaking manufacturing business.
Tan will also need to forge ties with US President Donald Trump, whose administration is floating its own ideas for how to reverse Intel’s fortunes, including leaning on Taiwan’s TSMC to support its US rival.
Trump administration officials have pressed TSMC to help run fabrication plants for Intel or make equity investments in the company, according to people familiar with the situation.
Tan acknowledged the challenges in a letter to employees this week. “I subscribe to a simple philosophy,” he wrote. “Stay humble. Work hard. Delight our customers. When you anchor yourself in those three core beliefs, good things happen.”
“In many ways, we are the founders of the ‘New Intel’,” Tan said.
Over its 57-year history, Intel’s chief executives have either been plucked directly from its top ranks or have spent a substantial portion of their careers there.
Tan, by contrast, is an investor who founded his venture capital group, Walden International, in 1987, which he continues to chair. Walden is known for its investments in dozens of semiconductor firms, and was an early investor in China’s state chip manufacturer SMIC.
Walden’s links to China led to scrutiny last year when a US congressional committee named it as one of five venture capital firms that invested billions of dollars in AI and chip groups, which, they said, helped China’s military ambitions. Walden did not respond to requests for comment.
Tan has also served on the boards of SoftBank, HPE and several semiconductor groups other than Intel. He currently serves as a director of Schneider Electric and Credo Technology Group.
His one previous executive role was at Cadence Design Systems, a chip design software company that forms a critical link in the global semiconductor industry. Tan served as its chief executive from 2009 to 2021, during which the company’s revenue more than doubled.
Tan has given no indication of where he stands on whether to sell, keep, or scale back Intel’s foundries: the most pressing of the many questions he faces from shareholders.
Gelsinger, who spent the first 30 years of his career at Intel, promised to transform Intel into a company that not only makes its own chips but also builds them for the likes of Nvidia and Apple, spending billions of dollars in the short term to catch up with TSMC.
Yet Gelsinger needed to convince those customers that Intel could be trusted to build their chips while also competing with them in the chip design market. As doubts grew over the viability of the company’s strategy to invest heavily in new foundries, Gelsinger’s credibility ebbed.
The question is whether the unassuming Tan can plot a clear and ruthless strategy for Intel. Bernstein analysts this week forecast further cuts to the business under his watch, after the company unveiled a $10bn cost-cutting effort in August that included 15,000 lay-offs.
People who know Tan described him as quiet and unshowy, but capable of levity. Former Cadence colleagues described Tan dressing up as a “minion” from the Despicable Me movies at a work party, and playing as a “ringer” in the intercompany basketball team.
Acquaintances also note his deep religiosity, something he has in common with his predecessor, Gelsinger. Mark Labberton, former senior pastor at Tan’s Presbyterian church in Berkeley, who has known the Tan family for years described him as a person of “high character, intelligence, dedication, energy, boldness and vision,” and “certainly not paralysed by risk”.
One venture capital investor who knows him said: “Tan is very smart, experienced and well-connected in the US and in Asia in the semiconductor space.”
“He has an amazing reputation in semis,” they added. “It’s very difficult to turn around Intel, but if anyone could do it, it would be him.”
Additional reporting by George Hammond in San Francisco
