Pat Gelsinger. Image: Intel Corporation
The 40-year tech industry veteran will replace Bob Swan as Intel’s CEO on 15 February.
Chip giant Intel has announced that tech leader Pat Gelsinger will become its new CEO.
Gelsinger most recently served as CEO of software company VMWare, where he is said to have transformed the company into a global leader in cloud infrastructure, enterprise mobility and cybersecurity, almost tripling the company’s annual revenues.
He also worked as president and chief operating officer of information infrastructure products at EMC.
Prior to these roles, Gelsinger worked at Intel for more than 30 years. In that time, he became the company’s first chief technology officer, and is noted for driving 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.
Speaking about his new role, Gelsinger said it’s a “privilege and honour” to return to the company. “I believe Intel has significant potential to continue to reshape the future of technology and look forward to working with the incredibly talented global Intel team to accelerate innovation and create value for our customers and shareholders.”
The chair of the Intel board, Omar Ishrak, said Gelsinger has a distinguished track record of innovation, talent and development as well as a deep knowledge of the company.
“The board is confident that Pat, together with the rest of the leadership team, will ensure strong execution of Intel’s strategy to build on its product leadership and take advantage of the significant opportunities ahead as it continues to transform from a CPU to a multi-architecture XPU company.”
Gelsinger will replace Bob Swan as CEO of Intel on 15 February and join the company’s board of directors.
The announcement comes a week ahead of Intel’s next earnings report, where the company expects its Q4 2020 revenue to exceed its prior guidance.
In October 2020, the chip maker reported that total revenue in the third quarter hit $18.3bn. While this exceeded the expectations set out in July, its data-centric revenue was down by 10pc and the enterprise and government segment shrank by 47pc, which the company attributed to “a weaker economy due to Covid-19”.
