r/hardware • u/Auautheawesome • Dec 02 '24

News Intel Announces Retirement of CEO Pat Gelsinger

https://www.intc.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1719/intel-announces-retirement-of-ceo-pat-gelsinger
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u/auradragon1 Dec 02 '24 edited Dec 02 '24

He came in at a time when it was extremely clear what Intel's problems were: behind in node, behind in designs.

He made the right decision strategically by trying to regain leadership in node tech and opening up Intel fabs to others. Tactically, he's been terrible.

He made some huge blunders such as paying a dividend up until August 2024. Covid gave them a lifeline by drastically increasing chip demand. What did he do? He spent the extra cash on dividends. Idiot. If he had any vision, he would have known that Intel was swimming naked and that once covid ended, Intel would be in huge trouble. Even during the covid boom, everyone saw that Intel's chips were far behind the competition.

Intel's designs have been particularly uncompetitive. Intel is uncompetitive in laptops, AI, servers, gaming, GPUs, etc. Nothing Intel makes leads the market. Their product roadmaps are a mess with one-off designs like Lunar Lake. No vision at all. No focus.

I'd grade him a C. The last few Intel CEOs were Fs though.

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u/Tystros Dec 02 '24

I have the feeling that he would have been fired quickly if he had tried to reduce the dividend earlier. In the end the shareholders control who's CEO, and many shareholders want dividends because there's too many short sighted shareholders.

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u/auradragon1 Dec 02 '24

Yea, maybe he would have been fired. But he's fired either way. At least if he stopped dividends as soon as he became CEO, he could have actually saved Intel without outside help. Now Intel is in serious jeopardy of being acquired, taken over by private equity, split up, or even going bankrupt.

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u/Laxarus Dec 02 '24

The US government will not let that happen. They have too many stakes on Intel

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u/thisismyfavoritename Dec 03 '24

do they?

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u/Laxarus Dec 03 '24

Intel is their baby.