Lip-Bu Tan gave his first keynote speech as Intel’s new CEO on March 31 at the Intel Vision event in Las Vegas. He’d been on the job for only 14 days, so this venue gave Lip-Bu his first opportunity to speak directly to Intel’s customers as a group and to tell them about his plans for the company. He started by providing some insight into his background. I’ve already covered this information in a previous article: “Lip-Bu Tan steps into the Intel CEO role. Can he save the company?”. Lip-Bu comes from an engineering background – nuclear engineering – and he solves problems like an engineer. He’s spent the last four decades as a successful venture capitalist, and his VC firm now manages $5 billion in investments. He focused his investing efforts on semiconductors long after the rest of the VC community turned its collective back on semiconductor startups. Lip-Bu prides himself on looking for opportunity where others aren’t, and he believes there’s still opportunity for Intel. That’s why he took on the job as the company’s latest CEO.
Intel’s new CEO Lip_Bu Tan delivered his vision for the company in a keynote at Intel Vision on March 31. Image credit: Intel
During his first two weeks as Intel’s CEO, Lip-Bu has been speaking with Intel’s customers and taking a deep dive into Intel’s engineering staff. During his keynote, he told the audience full of Intel’s customers that he wanted to speak to them as well, and he asked for the brutal truth. He wanted to know how Intel’s products were or were not delivering for them. He also warned that he’s not content with speaking with the top management during customer visits. He likes to go down as many as seven levels to get an accurate picture. Lip-Bu did this previously during his 14-year career as CEO at Cadence Design Systems. As he stated during his keynote, “I always want to have my customers, my team, my partners, my wife to give me the truth. Likewise, they also expect me to give them the truth. Then we can fix problems together and move forward as a team.”
Lip-Bu spent two years on Intel’s board but resigned in the middle of 2024. Now he’s back, and he’s talking to his internal teams to discover the ground truth at the company he now leads. Lip-Bu obliquely described what he’s uncovered and then gave the long-range vision he has for Intel:
“We’re going to refocus the company on the essential ingredients of innovation. Clearly, I need to focus on strengthening my balance sheets, and I need to really drive efficiency. I need to regroup the talent we have and attract some new talent, with a clear vision of what we’re going to do.
“Innovation starts with incubation. We are a big company that sometimes prevents new ideas from having room to develop and grow. I like to practice a startup, day-one culture, and we’re going to work as a day-one startup – a big startup. Then, we’re going to really drive some new ideas, giving engineers the freedom to innovate from within. My weekends are usually packed with [talking to] a lot of engineers and architects. They have some brilliant ideas. They want to change the world, and that’s where I get excited to work closely with them. I will put resources behind people and ideas where we can see the opportunity to innovate. We can free some of [Intel’s] infrastructure to really drive innovation and empower them.
“Most importantly, we will simplify the way we work. Bureaucracy kills innovation. In my career, I’ve seen how small, focused teams can move very fast, innovate, and take on incumbents. We’re going to practice that. We may not be perfect in the beginning, but eventually you can count on it. I will make it perfect. This will unleash the potential that I know exists across my team. It will also help us attract new talent from the outside. They can join us, and enter this most exciting period of creating innovation, and creating the new Intel.”
Then, Lip-Bu addressed his customers in the audience directly:
“Some of you know my email address. If you are interested, call me. I will spend time with you.”
After discussing the shortcomings he saw in Intel’s organization, Lip-Bu spoke about the key technological opportunities he sees for the company:
“We are operating in a very dynamic, fast-moving industry. Technology adoptions and disruption are accelerating faster than ever. This is being driven by one transformation force called AI.
“AI is not new, but with massive [amounts of] data available, you can really drive some new ways of learning, new ways of interpreting, and new ways to even forecast the future. This is really reshaping many of the companies I’m involved with, and [it’s] shaping our daily life. Can you imagine having an agent help you to decide and remove some of the mundane processes [you need to do]? I love agents…
“AI is driving a total architectural change to computing, especially in cloud computing. No code, low code, you know, software 2.0… This [change] is driving hyperscalers’ innovation. Massive computational power and new data capacity will accelerate us to move forward. [In addition,] some of the infrastructure, as I mentioned earlier, is moving into the photonics area. Also, I have invested in three quantum computing companies [through his VC firm]. This is coming and I keep a very close eye on it. [Quantum computing] will come sooner than we all thought.
“AI is also revolutionizing how we discover, create, and interact with content through agentic AI [AI systems that can act autonomously, adapt in real-time, and solve multi-step problems] and intelligent agents. Some of my friends are really working on [this] and are talking to me. We would love to have an Intel computer platform that we can build on for all of this…
“AI is also expanding into the physical world. You may have heard of humanoid robotics. I’m a very big fan of that. This is the new frontier. It will redefine industrials… It will create a new era of robotics and intelligent systems embedded everywhere around us.
“I have a lot of experience in these areas. Stay tuned.”
So, there you have it, directly from Intel’s new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan. He wants to clean up the bureaucracy and management structure within Intel (here’s looking at you, Processor Mafia), and as a futurist, he’s setting his sights on meeting the needs of future applications with a streamlined engineering team. Not once in his keynote did Lip-Bu say the word “marketing.” That’s because it’s not in his nature. Redirecting a company that’s come to rely on marketing, with advertisements that show people dancing in multicolored bunny suits and portray engineers as rock stars, to a semiconductor company that’s once again focused on leading-edge excellence and on-time delivery, is going to be a monumental task. Here’s hoping Lip-Bu and Intel are up to the task.
