Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan Admits Intel Has "Fallen Short of Your Expectations," Promises a "New Era"

Intel's new chief executive officer, Lip-Bu Tan, has taken to the stage at the company's Intel Vision 2025 summit with apologies for the company's apparent stagnation, promising a "new era" for the company — and one in which it's likely to spin out its non-core businesses.

"It has been 14 days, a very short time, since I joined the company," Tan admitted during his keynote at Intel Vision 2025 in Las Vegas. "This is not a long time, but long enough for me to have some clear observation and a plan to go forward. My number-one priority since my first day on the job has been spending time with customers. It is very clear from the early conversations we have a lot of hard work ahead. There are areas [where] we have fallen short of your expectations."

Tan joins Intel at a troubled time for the storied semiconductor company. After being caught on the hop by the explosion of interest in low-power high-performance chips for the mobile and embedded markets, where Cambridge-based Arm dominates, the company has again found itself losing ground as the artificial intelligence (AI) bubble continues to grow — losing ground both to established rivals like NVIDIA and up-and-coming startups alike, as the demand for high-density compute only grows.

Coupled with struggles to continue following Moore's Law — the observation turned target by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore that the number of transistors on a leading-edge part trends towards a doubling every 18 months, which requires in turn ever-more-precise process nodes with smaller feature sizes — and to get its bleeding-edge production lines operational at required yields, it's fair to say Intel is in trouble. Those troubles led to the ouster of former chief executive Pat Gelsinger, and now Tan is in the chair to steer the troubled ship to calmer waters.

"I will pull together strong teams to correct the past mistakes," Tan, a University of San Francisco graduate with a Masters in business administration (MBA), told attendees at the event, "and [will be] starting to earn your trust. My motto is very simple: under-promise and over-deliver. That has been my trademark. I will not be satisfied until we delight all of you."

In his speech, Tan spoke of a desire to move back to a customer-centric "software first" development process — and the embracing of AI-driven design workflows. Tan confirmed plans to work with Intel's semiconductor foundry arm to "refine its strategy," claiming that the company's Intel 18A process, a sub-2nm node designed for high-performance next-generation chips, is on-schedule and approaching its first tape-outs with volume production to begin in the second half with the company's "Panther Lake" chips. Tan also confirmed that the company would be looking to branch out further from central processing units (CPUs) into application-specific purpose-built silicon.

However, Tan isn't looking to lead the whole of Intel as it is today. During the speech Tan stated an intention to spin-off non-core business units, following its decision to do the same with its venture capital arm Intel Capital earlier this year. What he didn't say was exactly what constitutes a "core business unit" — though he did deny any plans to split the company's manufacturing and design divisions up, something now-fabless rival AMD did years ago resulting in the formation of GlobalFoundries.

"I'll be here as long as the company needs [me]," Tan concluded. "I'm deeply committed to this journey. Under my leadership, we will return [to] our roots, into an engineering-first company. It will start acting like a startup, day one, again. We will listen closely and act on your input."

The full keynote speech is embedded above.