Here comes Intel’s new CEO: a semiconductor veteran that won the same prestigious award as Jensen Huang and Lisa Su

Intel has a new CEO: Lip-Bu Tan. Once a member of Intel’s board of directors, Tan joins from his current position as chairman of Walden International and Founding Managing Partner at Walden Catalyst Ventures.

If all of that means nothing to you, he also once won the same award as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su. How’s that for context?

Yep, Tan won the Robert N. Noyce Award in 2022, which is aptly named to honour the memory of the Intel co-founder. Previous winners included Huang in 2021, Su in 2020, Morris Chang of TSMC fame in 2008, Gordon Moore of Moore’s law fame in 1994, and AMD founder Jerry Sanders in 1998. So you could say it’s a hot list.

Tan brings some experience to the role, then. Both as a big tech investor and from previously working as CEO of Cadence Design Systems, a company that makes or licenses products for designing other semiconductor products.

Tan is taking over the role from interim co-CEOs David Zinsner and Michelle Johnston Holthaus. Though, saying that, Holthaus will remain CEO of Intel Products, which deals with the non-manufacturing side of the business. Zinsner will stick around as CFO.

It’s not going to be an easy first year for Tan, however. Intel is in a bit of a state, as it was for most of previous CEO Pat Gelsinger’s time, with more rumours about who might be buying it than leaks for its next-generation products right now. The current rumour is Intel Foundry competitor TSMC, trying to convince Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom to go splitsies with it. That feels like a long-shot, but massive mergers and buyouts hardly ever make much sense to me.

Whether Tan has any interest in selling any part of Intel off is what to look out for in the coming months, and potentially years. The board might like Tan for his potential to take Intel back into big profits, but just as easily Tan might be the sort of character to cut their losses and spin out or sell a part of the business in the face of a good deal. We just don’t know yet.

We do know what the Intel board think: “Lip-Bu is an exceptional leader whose technology industry expertise, deep relationships across the product and foundry ecosystems, and proven track record of creating shareholder value is exactly what Intel needs in its next CEO,” says Frank D. Yeary, who was the acting executive chair for Intel’s board while searching for a new CEO.

What we should maybe hope for from Tan is a commitment to gaming graphics cards (don’t let us down, Tan) and to get Intel’s desktop CPUs back up to speed with the competition. AMD’s X3D chips are killing it, but there’s hardly enough to go around.

And here’s what Tan has to say:

“Intel has a powerful and differentiated computing platform, a vast customer installed base and a robust manufacturing footprint that is getting stronger by the day as we rebuild our process technology roadmap,” Tan continued. “I am eager to join the company and build upon the work the entire Intel team has been doing to position our business for the future.”

Also, Tan mentions some stuff about shareholder value, which crops up a lot in the Intel press release announcing the move. That will be a big priority for any Intel CEO now, as Intel’s share price has plummeted where other similar companies’ (Nvidia, AMD) have skyrocketed. That’s not that interesting to me though—bring me more affordable GPUs!