'Fire the Intel board and rehire Pat Gelsinger,' argues former Intel CEO Craig Barrett

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Barrett had some harsh words for Intel's board of directors.

Intel
(Image credit: Intel)

Former Intel CEO Craig Barrett said that Intel should not divide its business into two pieces, especially as it just had a technological breakthrough that would allow it to catch up with TSMC’s N2 process node. Barrett said this in his opinion piece on Fortune, in response to the suggestion of a few former Intel directors that championed dividing the chip giant instead of letting TSMC take it over.

Barrett said that the reason why Intel’s foundry business failed in the past years is because it lacked the technology to compete against the Taiwanese chipmaker, not because customers won’t trust Intel since it also makes and sells chips. But now that it’s seeing success with its 18A process technology, he argues that splitting off the foundry will only serve as a distraction and introduce complications. Instead, Intel should focus all its efforts on the 18A node, ensuring that it delivers “good customer service, fair pricing, guaranteed capacity, and a clear separation of chip designers from their foundry customers” alongside this advanced technology.

Aside from speaking up against the notion of splitting up Intel, the former CEO also criticized Intel’s former and current board. He said that the Intel board “bears ultimate responsibility for what has happened to Intel over the last decade” while saying that the next CEO to take the company’s reins should build on Pat Gelsinger’s accomplishments. The former CEO also took a swipe at the four former Intel board members. Barrett said that although they mean well, they were academics and former government bureaucrats who weren’t familiar with the complex workings of running a semiconductor business.

Pat Gelsinger, who was ousted as CEO of the company just last December, was one of the key people who led Intel to achieve its recent technological breakthroughs that might put it on par with TSMC. Developing and setting up production for new chip technologies takes years, something that Gelsinger pushed under his watch. In the end, it seems that Craig Barrett thinks that forcing Pat Gelsinger to retire was the wrong move for intel. He says, “In my opinion, a far better move might be to fire the Intel board and rehire Pat Gelsinger to finish the job he has aptly handled over the past few years.”

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Jowi Morales
Jowi Morales
Contributing Writer

Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.

41 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Dustyboy1492
    Barrett gets it, please do this.
    Reply
  • rluker5
    Good to hear a counterpoint to the last Intel article.
    But just because I agree with it doesn't mean I should state it is more credible than the previous one. Previous, retired Intel executives playing armchair quarterbacks, while having general experience, probably don't have the best current specific information on the internal situation at Intel so they will have to guess more than the people running the place now.

    If they asked someone with that current specific knowledge, say Gelsinger, I think you know what the assessment on splitting up the company would be.

    But I did like that he called out previous board members as academics and gov bureaucrats. You know that is the case sometimes. Sometimes high ranking officers at customers companies will also be hired. The board is often not the best suited for running the company.
    Reply
  • -Fran-
    Even with the benefit of hindsight, I'm sure the right call was to "allow him to retire". While his north was the right one, you can argue his "parachute" (for Intel) in the CHIPS act is now full of holes. His short term strategies were not paying off and AMD kept encroaching on the markets that actually support the Fabs and he completely misread the market and, more importantly, Intel's own portfolio of strengths and allowed the ship to continue to sink. Intel's reputation is not quite in the trash, but we can at least agree it's not the same "big blue" as it was before. The things Gelsinger let slip through were really baffling.

    Now, on the other hand, this doesn't mean finding a replacement for him (Pat) will be easy. Hardly. Intel is a big behemoth, so to steer this monster, you need a very strong and steady hand, commanding voice and, probably, a clear vision of where you want this monster to go. This could completely bypass the board, for which I agree with Mr Barrett, and the CEO needs to be able to tame them. I'm not even sure what the big "good" macro view would be for them. They've missed several boats now and playing catch up with their core markets shrinking, which is worrying.

    Food for thought! Mr. Barretts insight is not without merit, for sure.

    Regards.
    Reply
  • EzzyB
    -Fran- said:
    Even with the benefit of hindsight, I'm sure the right call was to "allow him to retire". While his north was the right one, you can argue his "parachute" (for Intel) in the CHIPS act is now full of holes. His short term strategies were not paying off and AMD kept encroaching on the markets that actually support the Fabs and he completely misread the market and, more importantly, Intel's own portfolio of strengths and allowed the ship to continue to sink. Intel's reputation is not quite in the trash, but we can at least agree it's not the same "big blue" as it was before. The things Gelsinger let slip through were really baffling.

    Now, on the other hand, this doesn't mean finding a replacement for him (Pat) will be easy. Hardly. Intel is a big behemoth, so to steer this monster, you need a very strong and steady hand, commanding voice and, probably, a clear vision of where you want this monster to go. This could completely bypass the board, for which I agree with Mr Barrett, and the CEO needs to be able to tame them. I'm not even sure what the big "good" macro view would be for them. They've missed several boats now and playing catch up with their core markets shrinking, which is worrying.

    Food for thought! Mr. Barretts insight is not without merit, for sure.

    Regards.
    I'm convinced Gelsinger wasn't fired over the current chips or the fabs at all. He was fired over the Gaudi 3 debacle. Even then the chips are apparently there, just no software to run on them.

    If anyone at Intel is paying attention they have a decent technology there. Right now the possibility exists that they could absolutely take over all but the highest end gaming market by simply offering 4070/5070 level GPUs for $500. It wouldn't be triple-your-stock-price-in-a-week AI hysteria, but it would be nice and profitable.

    Just the gesture would turn a lot of our buying dollars away from the other two companies that are obviously gouging gamers as AI sales are more profitable. There's a window there if they'll just take it.

    edit: proper sentences
    Reply
  • Jimbojan
    I totally agree, the board is the problem, not Pat Gelsinger.
    Reply
  • Trake_17
    I approve this
    Reply
  • Trake_17
    rluker5 said:
    Good to hear a counterpoint to the last Intel article.
    But just because I agree with it doesn't mean I should state it is more credible than the previous one. Previous, retired Intel executives playing armchair quarterbacks, while having general experience, probably don't have the best current specific information on the internal situation at Intel so they will have to guess more than the people running the place now.

    If they asked someone with that current specific knowledge, say Gelsinger, I think you know what the assessment on splitting up the company would be.

    But I did like that he called out previous board members as academics and gov bureaucrats. You know that is the case sometimes. Sometimes high ranking officers at customers companies will also be hired. The board is often not the best suited for running the company.
    You're talking like Gelsinger has been gone for 5 years. It's been a few months
    Reply
  • jheithaus
    The board should have let the 18a node roll out. This was what Gelsinger bet the company on. Now customers are ever less likely to use 18a because no one knows if a new CEO will arrive and cut IFS. The insanity of canning your biggest product release in a decade shows an unprecedented level of board incompetence. Looks like the competent intel insiders agree as do to the derivative lawsuits.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    -Fran- said:
    They've missed several boats now and playing catch up with their core markets shrinking, which is worrying.
    Which do you consider their core markets, and what do you mean with shrinking?
    Because they are still making roughly the same amount of money they always did, outside of the human malware bubble where they made twice the normal net income.
    EzzyB said:
    Right now the possibility exists that they could absolutely take over all but the highest end gaming market by simply offering 4070/5070 level GPUs for $500. It wouldn't be triple-your-stock-price-in-a-week AI hysteria, but it would be nice and profitable.
    They can't get enough wafers from tsmc to do that and even if they could it would take months to turn them into gpus at which point everybody in the market for a new GPU would already have one.
    It's fine, intel can wait until their fabs are online, it's not like nvidia will get less greedy in the future or AMD is going to become a huge supplier suddenly.
    Reply
  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    Pat Gelsinger also setup Intel for a multi-billion dollar shareholder lawsuit that cost a lot of people a lot of money and he got a golden parachute when he left, there would be a shareholder revolt if there were even whispers about bringing him back.
    Reply