Chip maker Intel said on Wednesday it would replace CEO Bob Swan with VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger beginning 15 February. The company’s shares were up nearly 10% in morning trading.
Intel, long the world leader in chip-making technology, has lost its manufacturing edge in recent years and is now debating whether to outsource some of it flagship CPUs, slated for release in 2023. Activist investor Third Point last month sent Intel’s board a letter asking it to consider whether to keep its chip design and manufacturing operations under one roof.
Gelsinger, a former Intel executive, has served as the CEO of VMware since 2012. During that time, he successfully guided the company, whose software helps companies squeeze more work out of data centre servers, through the transition from privately owned data centres to public cloud providers, in part by striking a seminal deal with Amazon.com’s Amazon Web Services.
“Having begun my career at Intel and learned at the feet of Grove, Noyce and Moore, it’s my privilege and honour to return in this leadership capacity,” Gelsinger said in a statement. “I have tremendous regard for the company’s rich history and powerful technologies that have created the world’s digital infrastructure.”
Intel on Wednesday also said that it expects to beat its financial forecast for the fourth quarter of 2020 and that it has made “strong progress” in addressing issues with its 7-nanometre chip manufacturing technology.
“From a credibility standpoint, he’s great — he’s probably the one at the top of most people’s list for who they would want to see,” Stacy Rasgon, an analyst at Bernstein, said of Gelsigner’s appointment.
‘He’s technical’
“He had a long career there and he’s technical, so he can address both the technical issues and cultural issues. The issue is, what’s the ship look like that he’s going to be running? The next two or three years are set in stone regardless of who is there.”
Swan, a former chief financial officer of eBay, had served as Intel’s finance chief and was named its interim CEO when Brian Krzanich resigned in June 2018. Swan was made permanent chief in early 2019 after an extensive search failed to yield an external candidate. — Reported by Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss, Stephen Nellis and Munsif Vengattil, (c) 2021 Reuters
