Intel CEO Admits to and Details The Company's Three Biggest Mistakes

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger
(Image credit: Intel)

Intel's CEO Pat Gelsinger has developed a reputation for plainly criticizing tech companies, and that's not limited to giants like Nvidia or AMD but also includes Intel itself. In an interview with Digit, Gelsinger spoke frankly about what he felt were Intel's three greatest failures: the company's failed smartphone business, the cancellation of an early AI-oriented GPU, and the lack of focus on "building a great foundry."

YouTube YouTube
Watch On

Gelsinger is still focused heavily on the foundry operations; it is now opening up its fabs to companies that want to create high-performance chips on Intel's cutting-edge process technologies. That's essentially the business model of TSMC and Samsung, the world's other two cutting-edge foundries. Intel had previously kept its cutting-edge nodes to use for its own processors, but Gelsinger has argued in the past that was a mistake.

By opening its fabs to other companies, even rivals like Nvidia, Intel could still at least make money through fabbing. That takes business away from TSMC and Samsung and boosts the amount of capital that Intel can invest in both manufacturing and R&D. In fact, that's the entire idea behind the company's new IDM 2.0 initiative that aims to open up Intel's fabs to external customers.

Gelsinger took care to point out that taking advantage of nascent trends was difficult, saying, "You don't get them all right" and that he would "bring us back into position on those." Now that he is at the helm, Gelsinger has charted a new course for Intel that now appears to be bearing fruit. Only time will tell if the ambitious turnaround plan includes catching the next big wave. 

TOPICS
Matthew Connatser

Matthew Connatser is a freelancing writer for Tom's Hardware US. He writes articles about CPUs, GPUs, SSDs, and computers in general.

  • systemBuilder_49
    Of course he is still a blind man because he misses Intel's biggest mistake! We are at the point where no single company can keep a state-of-the-art Fab busy 24/7, let alone afford to build it with prices in the $20b - $30b range these days! It was known this would happen to everyone 15 years ago and rather than start The foundry process and become a foundry Intel arrogantly launched a bunch of ambitious projects like smartphone chips and all those projects failed! They were greedy and thought they could win the entire market because they were Intel! The arrogance of Intel knows no limits!
    Reply