Pat Gelsinger will not be able to carry out the plan he imagined to turn around Intel. The American microprocessor giant has announced the departure with immediate effect of this pure product from the house. Having joined the company in 1979, he left it in 2009, before becoming general manager in February 2021. Pending the appointment of his successor, a tandem selected internally, composed of David Zinsner, the financial director, and Michelle Johnston Holthaus, executive vice-president, will lead the group.
Read also | Article reserved for our subscribers Subsidies allocated to Intel do not make it a champion of microprocessors
Read later
“Leading Intel has been the honor of my life”testifies Mr. Gelsinger in the press release reporting his departure, without really giving an explanation for this decision. He just admits that this last year has been particularly delicate “because we have made difficult but necessary decisions”. A reference to the economy plan announced at the beginning of August. Estimated at 10 billion dollars (around 9 billion euros) by 2025, it provides for the elimination of 15% of the workforce, or 16,000 people. Since then, Intel has also had to postpone the construction of two factories, in Germany and Poland, despite the massive subsidies offered to it.
As a symbol, at the beginning of November, Intel was kicked out of the Dow Jones index by Nvidia, the champion of chips dedicated to artificial intelligence, whose market capitalization is now around 3,400 billion dollars, compared to less than 110 billion dollars for Intel.
Integrated model
In 2021, when Pat Gelsinger returns to Intel, the golden age of the company – which benefited in particular, with Microsoft, from the development of the PC market – is over. The group missed the mobile telephony revolution, and sees its choices contested. Unlike the model « fabless » preferred by many of its competitors who outsource the production of their chips to others, Intel has chosen an integrated model. Mr. Gelsinger's bet is to take advantage of this specificity and invest massively in its manufacturing activity, known as foundry, to compete with the leaders in the sector (TSMC, Samsung, etc.).
A choice that requires tens of billions of dollars of investment to bring the latest generation factories to fruition. In the United States alone, the bill would approach 100 billion dollars. And even if the State comes to its aid – Intel is the main beneficiary of the “Chips and Science Act”, which aims to revive the semiconductor industry on the American market – this strategic shift weighs on its results.
You have 12.02% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
Related News :