Intel’s Turnaround CEO Pat Gelsinger Steps Down, Ending a Long Tenure at the Chipmaker

After nearly four years of attempting to turn around Intel’s struggling semiconductor business, Pat Gelsinger is out as the company’s CEO. His resignation ends a tenure marked by plunging profits and a failure to capitalize on the A.I. boom that lifted rivals like Nvidia. “We know that we have much more work to do at the company and are committed to restoring investor confidence,” said Frank Yeary, a longtime Intel board member who will act as its interim executive chair in light of Gelsinger’s departure, in a statement. “We are working to create a leaner, simpler, more agile Intel.”

Gelsinger, 63, stepped down as CEO and left Intel’s board effective yesterday (Dec. 1), the chipmaker announced today in a press release. David Zinsner and Michelle Johnston Holthaus, two senior Intel executives, will act as co-CEOs while the company’s board works to find a permanent successor. Zinsner is currently the company’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, while Holthaus has been appointed to the newly created position of head of Intel Products and will oversee its client computing, data center and A.I., and network groups. Intel shares rose 4 percent today in response to the news.

The resignation caps more than 30 years at Intel for Gelsinger, who first joined the company as a teenager in 1979 and went on to become its first chief technology officer at the turn of the century before leaving Intel in 2009. After taking a senior position at the tech company EMC and serving as the CEO of the cloud computing player VMware, Gelsinger in 2021 returned to Intel to take over from then-CEO Bob Swan. Despite ambitions to regain Intel’s leadership in the semiconductor industry, the company in recent years has failed to catch up with competitors and has seen its share price plunge by about 50 percent in 2024 alone.

An end to a tumultuous tenure

At the center of Gelsinger’s turnaround plan was a strategy to branch into contract manufacturing to compete with rivals like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), a major supplier to U.S. chipmakers like Nvidia (NVDA), AMD (AMD) and Qualcomm. In the meantime, the company has also pivoted to making A.I. accelerators to compete with industry leaders like Nvidia, but with little success—Intel’s current market cap is only 3 percent of Nvidia’s.

Intel is one of the largest beneficiaries of the Biden administration’s Chips and Science Act, which is awarding the company nearly $7.9 billion in federal grants to expand its domestic manufacturing network—about a quarter of Intel’s cost of goods sold in 2023.

Gelsinger’s ousting also came amid rumblings of activist investor interest in Intel. The company, which in October reported its largest-ever quarterly loss of $16.6 billion, reportedly tapped advisors like Morgan Stanley (MS) earlier this year to defend itself from activist pressure.

“Today is, of course, bittersweet as this company has been my life for the bulk of my working career,” said Gelsinger in a statement. “It has been a challenging year for all of us as we have made tough but necessary decisions to position Intel for the current market dynamics.”