After nearly four years of trying to turn around Intel’s struggling semiconductor business, Pat Gelsinger has stepped down as the company’s CEO. His resignation ends a tenure marked by high profits and a failure to cash in on the AI boom that has lifted rivals such as Nvidia. “We know we have a lot of work to do at the company and we are committed to restoring investor confidence,” said Frank Yeary, a longtime Intel board member who will serve as interim chairman due to Gelsinger’s departure, in a statement. “We’re working to build a leaner, lighter, faster Intel.”
Gelsinger, 63, stepped down as CEO and left Intel’s board effective yesterday (Dec. 1), the manufacturer announced today in a press release. David Zinsner and Michelle Johnston Holthaus, Intel’s top executives, will serve as CEOs while the company’s board works to find a permanent successor. Zinsner is currently the company’s senior vice president and chief financial officer, while Holthaus has been named to the newly created position of head of Intel Products and will oversee its client computing, data center and AI, and networking groups. Intel shares rose 4 percent today in response to the news.
The resignation caps more than 30 years at Intel for Gelsinger, who first joined the company as a junior in 1979 and became its first chief technology officer at the turn of the century before leaving Intel in 2009. After holding a senior position at technology company EMC and serving as CEO of cloud computing player VMware, Gelsinger in 2021 returned to Intel to take over from then-CEO Bob Swan. Despite the ambitions of regaining Intel’s leadership in the semiconductor industry, the company in recent years has failed to find competitors and has seen its price drop by 50 percent in 2024 alone.
The end of a turbulent time
At the center of Gelsinger’s turnaround plan was a strategy to enter the contract manufacturing sector to compete with competitors such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), a major supplier to US chipmakers such as Nvidia (NVDA), AMD (AMD) and Qualcomm. Meanwhile, the company also ventured into making AI accelerators to compete with industry leaders like Nvidia, but with little success—Intel’s current market share is only 3 percent of Nvidia’s.
Intel is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Biden administration’s Chips and Science Act, which awards the company about $7.9 billion in federal grants to expand its domestic manufacturing network — about a quarter of Intel’s cost of goods sold by 2023.
Gelsinger’s dismissal also comes amid claims that he is an activist investor interest in Intel. The company, which in October reported its biggest ever quarterly loss of $16.6 billion, reportedly tapped advisers such as Morgan Stanley (MS) earlier this year to protect itself from activist pressure.
“Today is really bittersweet as this company has been my life for most of my career,” said Gelsinger in a statement. “It’s been a challenging year for all of us as we’ve made difficult but necessary decisions to position Intel in the current market.”
