[RIYADH] Intel chief executive officer Tan Lip-Bu said he is working to “refocus” the beleaguered chip company on engineering after its struggles with complacency and mismanagement.
The executive, who was hired at Intel in March, blamed “too many layers of management” at the company for its slide from the top of the semiconductor market.
“It was a tremendous success 20, 30 years ago,” Tan said on Tuesday (Oct 28) at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh. “So I decided to come in and clean up.”
Tan said he has focused on opportunities in artificial intelligence and Intel’s fledgling foundry business, which produces chips and lags behind rivals in Taiwan.
Tan’s tenure at Intel has been bumpy. US President Donald Trump called for him to step down, citing his prior investments in China.
In August, however, the US government took a 10 per cent stake in Intel in an unconventional deal that’s part of Trump’s push to bolster manufacturing in critical industries.
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Tan said he asked to meet with Trump after those intial comments and explained that he was putting his Chinese investments, made while he was living in Singapore, in a charitable trust.
He added on Tuesday that sharing his strategy for Intel convinced Trump to make the investment. Tan compared the investment to Taiwan’s support of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, the dominant chipmaker that Intel is trying to challenge.
“I told him the plan that I have,” Tan said. “So he was delighted.”
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Investors are waiting to hear concrete details of those plans.
Intel reported third-quarter results that beat analyst expectations last week, resulting in a stock surge that receded as investors focused on its lingering challenges.
While the company remains the biggest maker of personal computer processors, it has fallen behind Nvidia in capitalising on the booming artificial intelligence market. BLOOMBERG
