Intel has announced that its CEO Bob Swan will resign. He will remain in the position until February 15th, after which Pat Gelsinger will replace him. Until now, Gelsinger was the CEO of VMware.
A specific reason for Swan’s departure was not shared. Rumours suggest it has to do with competitor AMD catching up at a time when Intel was unable to come up with a new architecture for years.
Bob Swan has worked at Intel since 2016. At the time, he replaced Stacy Smith as CFO. After Brian Krzanich stepped down from his position as CEO in 2018, Swan took over. Back then, he said that he did not want to fill the position permanently.
Rocky years
He took the lead of an ailing company. Under Krzanich, the development of new technology stagnated, giving competitor AMD the chance to catch up and recover from its failed Bulldozer architecture. The new AMD Zen architecture is steadily gaining market share from Intel, which could not release a true successor to its six-year-old Skylake architecture until this year.
Also under Swan, Intel has received quite a bit of bad press. The introduction of the 10nm process has been delayed for years. Recently, an investor suggested that the company should come up with ‘strategic alternatives’ for chip production. The investor was referring to splitting off the manufacturing branch or outsourcing part of the production to, for example, Samsung or TSMC.
Gelsinger
Pat Gelsinger previously worked at Intel as the company’s first CTO. He left Intel in 2009 to join EMC. Since 2012, Gelsinger has been CEO of VMware. It is not yet known who will take over his role there.
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