Gelsinger began his career at Intel in 1979, and was previously the company’s first chief technology officer.
Intel has announced today (2 December) that its CEO Pat Gelsinger has retired.
Gelsinger, a tech industry veteran with a career spanning more than 40 years, has also stepped down from Intel’s board of directors, effective as of yesterday (1 December).
Speaking about the announcement, Gelsinger said that leading Intel has been “the honour of a lifetime”.
“Today is, of course, bittersweet as this company has been my life for the bulk of my working career,” he said. “I can look back with pride at all that we have accomplished together. 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.
“I am forever grateful for the many colleagues around the world who I have worked with as part of the Intel family.”
Gelsinger first began his career at Intel in 1979, and over 30 years worked his way up to becoming the company’s first chief technology officer. During this tenure, Gelsinger drove work on key industry technologies such as USB and Wi-Fi.
According to Intel, Gelsinger was also the architect of the original 80486 processor, led 14 different microprocessor programs and played key roles in the Core and Xeon families.
In 2009, he left Intel to become president and chief operating officer of information infrastructure products at EMC, before becoming CEO at VMWare. Gelsinger rejoined Intel in 2021 as CEO.
While Intel’s board searches for a new full-time CEO, senior leaders David Zinsner and Michelle (MJ) Johnston Holthaus have been named as interim co-CEOs. Zinsner is Intel’s executive vice-president and chief financial officer, and Holthaus has been appointed to the newly created position of CEO of Intel Products.
Meanwhile, Frank Yeary, independent chair of the board of Intel, will become interim executive chair during the transitional period.
“On behalf of the board, I want to thank Pat for his many years of service and dedication to Intel across a long career in technology leadership,” said Yeary. “Pat spent his formative years at Intel, then returned at a critical time for the company in 2021.
“As a leader, Pat helped launch and revitalise process manufacturing by investing in state-of-the-art semiconductor manufacturing, while working tirelessly to drive innovation throughout the company.”
Last week, Intel was awarded nearly $8bn by the US government in an effort to boost chipmaking in the US.
The sizeable investment was awarded under the US government’s Chips Incentives Program’s Funding Opportunity for Commercial Fabrication Facilities, and it’s hoped that the funding will help support 30,000 jobs across four different states, according to the US Department of Commerce.
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