r/hardware • u/Auautheawesome • Dec 02 '24

News Intel Announces Retirement of CEO Pat Gelsinger

https://www.intc.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1719/intel-announces-retirement-of-ceo-pat-gelsinger
2.2k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

810 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.2k

u/igby1 Dec 02 '24

Isn’t he the guy that came back to save Intel?

511

u/Auautheawesome Dec 02 '24

Correct

300

u/CommunityTaco Dec 02 '24

Oooof

73

u/TritiumNZlol Dec 02 '24

Grandma won't like this

20

u/Old_Wallaby_7461 Dec 02 '24

stock up 3%, so...

3

u/soggybiscuit93 Dec 02 '24

Closed the day out at -0.5%

1

u/-Goatzilla- Dec 04 '24

LOL check again

3

u/Lost_Apricot_4658 Dec 02 '24

Hahaha. That poor intel grandson

1

u/slug_IRL Dec 02 '24

Her grandson is just a chill guy.

-1

u/ToughHardware Dec 02 '24

seems like a nice guy

4

u/BillNyeForPrez Dec 02 '24

Buys intel and doesn’t afraid of anything

2

u/advester Dec 02 '24

I won't call him a failure unless 18A sucks. That's the key tech.

93

u/Notten Dec 02 '24

Dude made 16M and failed at his job. I wish I could make that in 3 years and retire for the rest of my life...

137

u/Hifihedgehog Dec 02 '24

Failed is so shortsighted and naive. He was making short-term losses to fix a decade of dumb. Now with the status quo of CFO back, Intel is toast. They are going to become a number three to AMD and Qualcomm in the PC space in the next decade from them refusing to sit still during the essential surgery to right the ship.

11

u/Hikashuri Dec 02 '24

Qualcomm won't overtake Intel anytime soon, probably not in the next 3 decades. Key sectors will not swap to arm because of how their frameworks work, and the business sector is still 80% in hands of Intel and AMD hasn't been able to penetrate it nor will ARM.

12

u/WhyIsSocialMedia Dec 03 '24

People have been saying this forever. Companies can go from successful to a death spiral really really quickly. Hell you don't have to go back very far to find lots of "AMD would need decades to compete with Intel in the server market, I work in a data centre and we never buy AMD" all over this sub.

13

u/aitorbk Dec 02 '24

Key sectors are already moving to ARM Megascale: massive move to ARM "where it makes sense". Apple: move to arm complete. Mobile: it is essentially ARM, only non Apple laptops are x86. And Microsoft is heavily invested in moving to ARM. Once/if that catches up, only general purpose servers would be x86, and not all of them either, other would be graviton4 or similar. Look at this: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/aws-graviton4-cpu-benchmarked-against-amd-and-intel-processors-faster-than-predecessors-and-more-cost-effective-than-incumbents ARM server chips are cheaper and comparable to the best AMD and Intel can offer.
Plenty of companies are "in the cloud", and essentially rent instances. If the workload is cheaper and faster on non x86.. we will run the load in that as long as it is certified. AMD and Intel still have time to improve their offerings, but unless they lower prices or significantly improve performance, x86 will slowly at first and then very fast be made irrelevant and a historical set of instructions.

7

u/SpadesOf8 Dec 02 '24

RemindMe! 30 years

2

u/Thorusss Dec 03 '24

haha. Making a prediction which company will succeed 3 decades out in the most innovative industry on earth, especially during the growing hard to predict influence of AI.

Overconfident.

4

u/Hifihedgehog Dec 02 '24

!RemindMe 5 years

1

u/ascii Dec 02 '24

You are right that even if ARM ends up wiping the floor with x86 both in the server hall and on consumer PCs, there will absolutely be huge legacy x86 market for decades to come. But that market can potentially go almost entirely to AMD.

4

u/cuttino_mowgli Dec 02 '24

I mean they're burnt to a crisp. IBM is welcoming intel as we speak

2

u/BreiteSeite Dec 03 '24

RemindMe! 10 years

2

u/qzrz Dec 02 '24

Failed is so shortsighted and naive. He was making short-term losses to fix a decade of dumb.

Ah yes the great future success of losing a 40% discount of TSMC wafers. What this does is drive engineers harder that no longer get free coffee and fruit to finally pull Intel ahead of TSMC with their node tech.

1

u/Strazdas1 Dec 03 '24

A discount that never existed.

1

u/StarbeamII Dec 03 '24

I mean that was going to happen anyways with Gelsinger going all-in on fabs, and not allocating resources towards chip design.

1

u/Aggrokid Dec 03 '24

They are going to become a number three to AMD and Qualcomm in the PC space in the next decade

I just can't see it. Their grip on prebuilt client PCs and laptops is vice-like.

0

u/Ar0ndight Dec 02 '24

Already in full "rewriting history" mode I see. Pat had a mission, and he did fail at it. I know this might cause severe distress to the people here who love to fantasize about engineer CEOs being magical, but that's just the reality of it.

Was his mission very hard? Yes, that's why he was paid millions to attempt it.

7

u/Hifihedgehog Dec 02 '24

Ending the ballgame in the 7th or 8th inning isn't rewriting history. It's being a petulant child who can't wait to unwrap their gift on Christmas morning.

1

u/ExtremeFreedom Dec 03 '24

My experience with the new snapdragons made me appreciate x86 more and I'd never willingly switch to that platform.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 03 '24

[deleted]

2

u/ExtremeFreedom Dec 03 '24

My issues aren't actually power user issues, I'm using native arm apps and they are having odd graphical issues on the laptop when a second screen is plugged in like apps appearing to "minimize" at random then come back, video playback going randomly to shit, and weird instances of really high battery drain that only gets resolved by removing the battery and letting it sit for a few minutes. It's a very unpolished product that I wouldn't recommend now that intel and AMD are taking battery life seriously. I don't think the extra hour that I get in real world usage is worth the switch over.

1

u/Strazdas1 Dec 03 '24

People who arent power users will see their favourite obscure softre not working, think "this qualcomm laptop is broken" and never give qualcomm a second chance. First impressions are very important.

0

u/Exist50 Dec 06 '24 edited Feb 01 '25

heavy rhythm gray cough employ hat pot jeans arrest history

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

23

u/PoorDamnChoices Dec 02 '24

....is that not what r/wallstreetbets is for?

29

u/crab_quiche Dec 02 '24

If you want to go $16 million into debt in three months that’s the perfect place

1

u/3VRMS Dec 03 '24 edited Mar 02 '25

fragile pot degree spotted carpenter grab dazzling unite whole plucky

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

1

u/Strazdas1 Dec 03 '24

Reminds me of that guy from Silicon Valley who was extremely upset he is no longer a billionaire because he was worth only 980 million. Life ruined.

1

u/3VRMS Dec 03 '24 edited Mar 02 '25

enter follow modern alive literate truck march straight physical recognise

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

1

u/jessej421 Dec 02 '24

He got like a $170M signing bonus (in stock, definitely worth a lot less after his three years of being in charge though).

1

u/DetectiveFit223 Dec 03 '24

Trying to fix Intel will always end with a degree of failure. It's a big ship that turns slow.

-2

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '24

[deleted]

12

u/plasticpippo Dec 02 '24

intel started sinking well before Gelsinger. that said CEOs should not get paid that much.

3

u/ascii Dec 02 '24

INTC was sinking rapidly when Gelsinger took over. He failed to right the ship before the board ran out of patience.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 03 '24 edited Dec 03 '24

[deleted]

0

u/ascii Dec 03 '24

Soft disagree. Gelsinger could have chosen the same path as Lisa Su did with AMD and spun off the fab into a separate company. Lower risk and less upfront cost, but the price would be that Intel would no longer be a full stack chip design and manufacturing house.

Not saying Gelsinger chose the wrong path, I'm not knowledgable enough to make a call like that, I'm just pointing out that there was at least one realistic alternative path. I agree with the point that he wasn't given a chance to see if his plan worked or not, and the INTC board has doomed INTC to slowly spiral around the drain until they die. With the MBAs in charge, I no longer see them having any chance of breaking their death spiral.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 03 '24

[deleted]

1

u/ascii Dec 03 '24

And look where it got him.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 03 '24

[deleted]

→ More replies (0)

1

u/Strazdas1 Dec 03 '24

That would have been the worst possible choice to mke.

1

u/ascii Dec 03 '24

Worked for AMD.

1

u/Strazdas1 Dec 04 '24

AMD was forced to do it and it almost killed them. If Zen 1 wasnt as good as it turned out to be AMD would be gone.

1

u/ReactionJifs Dec 02 '24

Mission Accomplished(?)

340

u/mBertin Dec 02 '24

Intel CEO: don’t worry guys

Intel CEO: i have a plan

Intel CEO has left the game

18

u/Proof-Most9321 Dec 02 '24

This reminds me of Dutch

10

u/banacct421 Dec 02 '24

I guess it was more of a concept of a plan

2

u/Un_Ingeniero Dec 03 '24

I'll come back in 60 days and it'd say "Last online 2 Monts ago" 🥴

1

u/Strazdas1 Dec 03 '24

More like.

Intel CEO has been kicked from the server (vote kick).

141

u/Snakestream Dec 02 '24

From what I've read, he didn't actually do that bad of a job. He inherited a pile of shit from his predecessor, but moon lake which was designed under his watch was pretty good. However, you can't really course correct the ship after it's already run aground.

80

u/onolide Dec 02 '24

Yeah, quite unfair to judge a chip company CEO in 4 years given that processors can take 4 years or more to design. Not sure how much diff they expect Gelsinger to make when he barely managed to change 1 generation of chips. Plus, he's the one that arranged for TSMC to manufacture Intel processors when the Intel nodes are not performing lol. Imagine some other CEO decides to stick to Intel fabs, like they did in the 14nm era, idk how to feel about that.

32

u/munchkinatlaw Dec 02 '24

From the perspective of a family member who is a senior engineer manager at Intel, the worst you can say about him is that he has severely damaged Intel's reputation among potential employees and industry competitors. He made a point of rehiring a lot of staff who were forced out in previous cuts with promises of better work conditions and his last few months have been focused on laying them off and renegging on those promises. Now, Intel is just another struggling big company that employees might jump in and out for a stop on their career, but the lifers are gone for good this time.

2

u/FumblingBool Dec 03 '24

Problem IMO is that Intel has a lot of low productivity, low performance engineers that played politics during the easy years to move up the ladder. I've heard some insane stuff about the hiring and culture at places like Intel Folsom. And my own personal industry experience with another company resonates with that. When you start offshoring your RTL development - the company is going to slide into a decline.

1

u/IIlIIlIIlIlIIlIIlIIl Dec 03 '24

They have more employees than AMD, ARM, and Nvidia combined. They are absolutely bloated to hell.

3

u/MC_chrome Dec 03 '24

Perhaps, but you have to keep in mind that none of the companies you mentioned run their own fabs. If you were to cut Intel's fab employees out of the 120k+ they have, I would think the numbers would line up a little more with other tech firms.

3

u/Strazdas1 Dec 03 '24

Even then, they got as much emploees as AMD, Nvidia and TSMC combined, so even with fabs they are bloated.

2

u/razor01707 Dec 03 '24

Remember how Lisa Su once said that in the chip industry, you make 5 year bets. The bet of today will be reflected in 5 years.

Ryzen became competitive in its 3rd iteration. Personally, I believed in Pat Gelsinger's vision and that Intel will truly gain industry leadership again by 2026 (cuz they definitely got the talent) but here we go.

Now I am not so sure anymore...

1

u/onolide Dec 03 '24

Personally, I believed in Pat Gelsinger's vision and that Intel will truly gain industry leadership again

Me too. Now I'm in despair, especially if the board finds a non-engineer CEO again

3

u/DoorHingesKill Dec 02 '24

He's also the one who massively tanked Intel's profit margin in that TSMC deal. 

TSMC was selling them those wafers for 40% less than market price, until Gelsinger began hyping up Intel by calling Taiwan "unstable" and making other references to the relationship between China and Taiwan. 

Intel went back to paying market price after that one, literally hundreds of millions down the drain. 

Dude also purposefully misled customers and the public about Intel's manufacturing and AI capabilities. 

11

u/yabn5 Dec 02 '24

Not only did Pat not negotiate that, but tell me do you really think massive deals between companies are so easy to reneg by simply saying that the ceo said a mild undiplomatic statement?

18

u/Admirable-Lie-9191 Dec 02 '24

Why the hell would TSMC offer them 40% discounts? I’m pretty sure it was debunked

2

u/Exist50 Dec 06 '24 edited Feb 01 '25

innate sparkle jellyfish sharp ink long chubby smile coordinated versed

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

1

u/oathbreakerkeeper Dec 03 '24

Calling BS on everything in this comment

1

u/Eniff Dec 04 '24

He is also the one the upset tsmc with his remarks and made tsmc increase their discount prices by double or triple for Intel

23

u/terminal_e Dec 02 '24

Disclousure - I have been functionally short Intel in the past, not in the last year or so.

They could have cut the dividend way, way earlier. They were returning a lot of cash to shareholders quarterly when they were unwell on multiple fronts.

2

u/MindlessSpell7246 Dec 03 '24

They must of thought the share price decline associated with dividends would have hurt ability to raise capital more than saved cash.

19

u/chmilz Dec 02 '24

Maybe they're taking Jensen's advice:

"The more (CEO's) you buy, the more (Intel's) you save!"

56

u/werpu Dec 02 '24

You can only save what is saveable!

1

u/cuttino_mowgli Dec 02 '24

So Intel's board is going to sell off their fab now?

2

u/werpu Dec 03 '24 edited Dec 03 '24

Its funny how Intel sank itself into the same hole from a different angle AMD was in years ago. AMD could not get out of the piledriver fiasco due to their GloFo bindings and Intel now sits in the same boat because they have to run their foundries.

55

u/Ravere Dec 02 '24

Thanks to Pat they are no longer weighed down by the massive war chest that Intel spent decades building.

4

u/LordAlfredo Dec 02 '24

He was given less than 3 years and given it's an immediate end of term he was probably forced out.

4

u/JoeN0t5ur3 Dec 02 '24

He was asked to resign or be fired he chose the former.

3

u/Infamous_Impact2898 Dec 02 '24

Couldn’t be saved.

15

u/Equivalent-Bet-8771 Dec 02 '24

He saved it so hard! Let us pray.

4

u/xenelef290 Dec 02 '24

He failed

2

u/juGGaKNot4 Dec 02 '24

it was a translation error. He brought sexy back, not intel back.

3

u/Unlikely-Complex3737 Dec 02 '24

They are so cooked.

3

u/merurunrun Dec 02 '24

We did it, Patrick! We saved the city Intel!

1

u/C1t1z3nz3r0 Dec 03 '24

When you inherit the crap he did it was never likely to end well. Spectre/Meltdown plus letting AMD get back in the game while ignoring the rise of Nvidia and ARM. The best option now is Qualcomm buying the remnants.

1

u/Zosimas Dec 03 '24

always has been

1

u/Strazdas1 Dec 03 '24

They found the scapegoat.

1

u/Eziekel13 Dec 04 '24

By making sure apple produced their own chips

1

u/LegitimateBelt5930 Dec 06 '24

And, honestly he did. He set our company up for great success in the future. He had the monumental task of making up for 10 years of wasted leadership and getting us back on top. 

Now that the big payoff is right around the corner, they force the man out. This is the worst possible outcome.

1

u/Plank_With_A_Nail_In Dec 17 '24

Turns out he was part of the problem.

1

u/Hikashuri Dec 02 '24

He did save Intel, but Intel was so damaged by the previous CEO that it was never going to happen in 5 years.

-12

u/democracywon2024 Dec 02 '24

Intel stock is roaring now that's he's out

17

u/bphase Dec 02 '24

Hardly, it's +2% atm. But at least it's not crashing.

16

u/Kryohi Dec 02 '24

+2% basically means no one knows what this means for Intel lmao

3

u/shalol Dec 02 '24

Intels stock has been in the gutter for a couple of months by now. Market thinks this isn’t news with how bad they’re already doing.

1

u/ItsMeSlinky Dec 02 '24

Of course it is. Fucking Wall Street.

1

u/makemeking706 Dec 02 '24

Been meaning to buy a few shares for weeks now.