While it is widely believed that Intel's board of directors ousted chief executive Pat Gelsinger earlier this week as they did not agree with his strategy and tactics, interim co-CEO David Zisner said at a conference that the company's core revival strategy would remain intact. The BoD still believes that Intel should continue developing its products and maintain its manufacturing capacity to produce its own products as well as make chips for others.
"I mean, the Board was pretty clear that the core strategy remains intact," Zisner said at the UBS Global Technology Conference this week. "We still want to be a world-class foundry, and we want to be the Western provider of leading-edge silicon to customers. That remains our goal."
One of the objections that the Board had against Pat Gelsinger was his execution on the product side of the business, as Intel Foundry can only be successful if Intel's products are successful and the chip designer can guarantee a high utilization rate for the manufacturing unit. Apparently, the BoD was not particularly happy with product delays in general and the failure to get into the AI game in particular.
Given that by now the board of directors has outlined that it needs a chief executive who can successfully execute on the product side of the business while also continuing to develop the foundry business, it is at least more or less clear what kind of person the BoD is looking for. In fact, there are very few people in the industry who have the right experience to run Intel at this point, which makes letting Pat Gelsinger go seem even more shocking. But apparently, the board somehow lost hope in Gelsinger.
"I would not read into the fact that the Board wants to focus on making sure we build out the products business and continue to execute there while standing up a foundry business as something related to Pat and the Board deciding that now is the right time," said Zisner. "That was for personal reasons specific to Pat and the Board."
The good news is that Intel's board of directors does not seem to have immediate plans to spin off manufacturing. However, with Gelsinger out, it will be hard to find someone who has experience with executing product development and developing the foundry business.
