Gelsinger , who resigned on Monday, left after a board meeting last week during which directors felt Gelsingers costly and ambitious plan to turn Intel around was not working and the progress of change was not fast enough, according to a person familiar with the matter. The board told Gelsinger he could retire or be removed, and he chose to step down, according to the source.
His departure comes well before the completion of his four-year road map to restore the companys lead in making the fastest and smallest computer chips, a crown it lost to Taiwans TSMC, which makes chips for Intel rivals such as Nvidia.
Under Gelsinger, Intel, which was founded in 1968 and for decades formed the bedrock of Silicon Valleys global dominance in chips, has withered to a market value more than 30 times smaller than Nvidia, the leader in artificial intelligence chips.
Gelsinger in 2021 inherited a company rife with challenges that he compounded. Setting lofty ambitions for manufacturing and AI capabilities among major clients, Intel ultimately lost or cancelled contracts under his watch and was unable to deliver the promised goods. He made optimistic claims about prospective AI chip deals that exceeded Intel's own estimates, leading the company to scrap a recent revenue forecast about a month ago.
The company named chief financial officer David Zinsner and senior executive Michelle Johnston Holthaus as interim co-CEOs while its board conducted a search for a new CEO. The moves come less than a week after US officials gave US7.9-billion in subsidies to Intel.
