Push-up artist and the main face of Intel for the past three years, Pat Gelsinger, is leaping into retirement effective immediately. The company’s CEO had worked with Intel on and off for over three decades, but he spent only three years as CEO. After being the face of Intel’s stock downslide, Pat’s sudden retirement leaves many questions at the door. The only clear thing is Intel’s leadership is looking for a change in direction.
Intel announced Gelsinger’s departure late Sunday. The company doesn’t have a true replacement in place, and instead, the company’s board will install two interim co-CEOs while it goes headhunting for a new chief. If Gelsinger’s leaving were at all premeditated, it would still be an awkward time for the company. Intel is gearing up to release two new discrete GPUs this week, plus it will have to deal with any new competing processor and computing hardware coming out of CES in January next year.
Gelsinger was head of Intel during a turbulent time for the company. It was left behind on AI training chips while competitor Nvidia became one of the most profitable companies in the world. While its first “AI PC” chips landed in December 2023, it had to wait until its Lunar Lake lineup dropped earlier this year before it could get the “Copilot+ PC” from Microsoft.
Intel was also scrutinized for how it handled a voltage issue on some of its 13th—and 14th-gen desktop CPUs that could brick users’ computers. The company went through waves of layoffs earlier this year, and then its latest Arrow Lake desktop Intel Core Ultra chips, launched in October, didn’t set the world on fire.
Intel acknowledged issues with Arrow Lake in an interview with HotHardware last month. Intel’s VP of client AI and technical marketing, Robert Hallock, said, “We’ve identified a series of issues—multi-factor—they’re at the OS level and the BIOS level, and the performance we saw in reviews… was not what we expected and not what we intended.”
The company has long relied on being one of the two main chipmakers for most PCs used in the U.S. and elsewhere. This is why Intel is referred to as “Team Blue” while its competitor, AMD, is called “Team Red.” Then Qualcomm changed the game with ARM-based Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus chips. Microsoft put its weight behind the new selection of laptop processors that promised the epitome of battery life and performance on small-form devices.
Intel’s Lunar Lake chips made up some ground on battery life and X86 performance, but OEMs have not adopted some of the more expensive and powerful Intel Core Ultra Series 2 processors. As for manufacturing its chips, Intel gained $8.5 billion from the U.S. CHIPS Act to construct new plants in Arizona.
Chief finance officer David Zinsner and Michelle Johnston Holthaus, who will also be CEO of Intel’s product, data centers, and AI groups, are stepping up to the co-CEO role.
Gelsinger worked at Intel from 1979 to 2009 and returned in February 2021. Intel’s board hoped he would right the ship. It’s unclear whether the former Intel CEO received any pressure to retire, but this latest shakeup only helps show that the company’s current initiatives weren’t working as well as intended.