On December 2, local time, Intel announced that CEO Pat Gelsinger retired on December 1 and resigned from the company’s board of directors.
Intel said Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner and product group head MJ Holthaus have been named interim co-ceos while the company’s board searches for a new chief executive. Longtime board member Frank Yeary will serve as interim executive chairman.
Clashes between Gelsinger and the board reached a point of no return during a board meeting last week, with Intel’s board believing Gelsinger had failed to effectively lead the company to catch up with NVIDIA and lacking confidence in his recovery plan, according to people familiar with the matter. Yeary is known to have been a key mover behind Gelsinger’s downfall. As Intel’s longest-serving board member, Yeary will now have to preside over another selection process for the company’s CEO.
Gelsinger, 63, has had a stellar career at Intel, where he became chief technology officer in 2001 and led the development of key technologies such as Intel’s Core and Xeon chip family. Gelsinger left Intel to join EMC as president and CFO in 2009, and was named CEO of VMware in 2012.
Mr. Gelsinger returned as CEO in 2021 as Intel faced pressure from activist investors to shake things up. He embarked on an ambitious five-year turnaround plan, building massive chip factories in the U.S. and overseas to try to catch up with chip giants like TSMC and Samsung.
However, Gelsinger suffered several setbacks during his tenure and struggled to deliver on his promises. In recent years, Intel has not only lost ground to rival AMD in the data-centre chip market, but also faced the rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and NVIDIA.
While NVIDIA was once valued at more than $3.6 trillion, making it the world’s most valuable company, Intel’s market value is less than half of what it was in 2021, briefly falling below $100 billion earlier this year. Intel shares are down about 50% this year.
In September, media reports said Qualcomm was considering a takeover of struggling Intel. However, the latest reports suggest that Qualcomm’s interest in acquiring Intel has cooled as the complexity of buying the entire Intel business has made such a deal less attractive to Qualcomm.