Keep pulling the thread on Pat Gelsinger.
Prior to Pat Gelsinger's return as CEO, Intel had fallen from a two-to-three-year lead in process technology to a two-to-three-year lag behind its competitors.
In the years preceding Pat Gelsinger's return, Intel returned $70 billion to shareholders through stock buybacks and dividends instead of investing in new factory construction.
Pat Gelsinger believes the U.S. semiconductor supply chain remains too fragile and overly dependent on Asia, with Taiwan representing a single point of failure.
Pat Gelsinger's turnaround strategy at Intel, which included the goal of delivering five process nodes in four years (known as 18A), has remained unchanged since his departure.
Intel is regaining its leadership position in semiconductor technology through innovations like EUV, High-NA lithography, and backside power delivery.
Intel made a critical strategic error by not adopting EUV lithography, a technology it helped to create, which contributed to its loss of process leadership.
Pat Gelsinger believes the entire computing stack is being rebuilt due to the demands of AI, impacting everything from thermals and data center design to memory and I/O architectures.
Before Pat Gelsinger became CEO, Intel had not produced a chip on schedule for five or six years.
During his eight-year tenure as CEO of VMware, Pat Gelsinger tripled the company's size and market capitalization.
Pat Gelsinger asserts that when he returned to Intel as CEO, the company's business performance appeared stronger than it actually was due to a surge in PC demand during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pat Gelsinger argues that the U.S. lacks incentives for long-term, capital-heavy industry investments, causing manufacturing to move to other countries.
Intel's process technology 18A is performing well, and its successor, 14A, is expected to be even better.