Intel announced that CEO Pat Gelsinger will officially retire on December 1, 2024, and resign from the company's board of directors at the same time. The board of directors has established a search committee to find Gelsinger's successor.
Meanwhile, David Zinsner and Michelle Johnston Holthaus have been appointed as interim co CEOs. The latter was also appointed as the newly established CEO of Intel Products, responsible for the Client Computing Group (CCG), Data Center and Artificial Intelligence Group (DCAI), and Network and Edge Group (NEX). In addition, Frank Yeary, as the independent chairman of Intel's board of directors, will serve as interim executive chairman during the transition period. The leadership structure of Intel Foundry remains unchanged.
According to official sources, David Zinsner has over 25 years of financial and operational experience in the technology industry. He joined Intel from Micron Technology Inc. in January 2022, previously serving as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Micron.
Michelle Johnston Halsos started working at Intel nearly thirty years ago. Prior to her new appointment, she was the Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Client Computing Division (CCG). She has held various management and leadership positions at Intel, including Chief Revenue Officer, General Manager of Sales and Marketing, and Head of Global CCG Sales.
Frank Yeri expressed gratitude on behalf of the board for Pat Kissinger's retirement and said, "There is still a lot of work to be done for the company, and we are committed to restoring investor confidence. As the board, our top priority is to make it clear that we must place the product team at the center of what we do. With new personnel appointments, we ensure that the product team will receive the resources needed to meet customer needs. Ultimately, returning to process leadership is at the core of product leadership, and we will continue to focus on this mission while improving efficiency and profitability
Looking back, Pat Kisinger has been working at Intel for 33 years. Joined Intel as a Quality Assurance Engineer in 1979 and subsequently rose through the ranks. In 1993, he became the youngest Vice President in the company's history and was appointed as Intel's first Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in 2001. In 2009, he left Intel and went to work at EMC and VMware. Until 2021, Intel announced his return as CEO.
Recently, Intel's performance has been continuously questioned by the outside world. In the third quarter of 2024, the company's revenue was $13.3 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 6%, with a net loss of up to $16.6 billion, a year-on-year shift from profit to loss, breaking Intel's loss record. For this huge loss, Intel stated that it was affected by impairment ($15.9 billion) and restructuring expenses ($2.8 billion), and called the company one of the most groundbreaking restructuring processes since its establishment in 1968. One day after the financial report was released, the Dow Jones Industrial Average removed Intel from its constituent stocks and replaced it with Nvidia. Intel's stock price has been declining recently, dropping to $18 per share at one point, hitting a new low since 2013.
The outside world believes that Intel's declining performance is related to fierce external competition. Under the wave of artificial intelligence, Intel's main product line, CPUs, did not meet the hardware needs of AI computing. Instead, GPUs became more urgently needed by the market. Meanwhile, its Gaudi deep learning accelerator and Intel GPU cannot compete with Nvidia AI chips in terms of performance and market share. The market share of its X86 ecosystem is being occupied by the ARM system, and its share is continuously declining.
In response to market challenges, Intel launched the IDM2.0 program in 2024, separating its foundry business. However, in competition with contract manufacturers such as TSMC, the advantages of its contract manufacturing business have not been demonstrated, but have instead become a drag on overall performance. In the third quarter of 2024, revenue was $4.4 billion and operating losses were $5.844 billion, which was one of the main drag on Intel's losses.
In order to salvage the continuously declining performance, Intel has taken a series of measures. It continues to invest in the research and development of advanced processes, and Intel 18A will be mass-produced in 2025. The next generation AI PC processor Panther Lake and the next generation data center processor Clearwater Forest based on Intel 18A will be released next year. At the same time, the company has launched a full stack AI product portfolio, including Core Ultra processors, Xeon Scalable processors, Gaudi deep learning accelerators, Intel GPUs, etc., to address the technological challenges of the AI era. In response to the challenges posed by the ARM ecosystem, Intel and AMD have jointly established the X86 Ecosystem Advisory Group, collaborating with industry partners such as Broadcom, Dell, Google, Meta, Lenovo, and Microsoft to further enhance compatibility and consistency among X86 products.
As of press time, Intel's after hours trading price was $23.97 per share, a slight increase of 0.17%.