Here comes Intel's new CEO: a semiconductor veteran that won the same prestigious award as Jensen Huang and Lisa Su

Recently appointed Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan. — (Image credit: Lip-Bu Tan)

Intel has a new CEO: Lip-Bu Tan. Once a member of Intel's board of directors, Tan joins from his current position as chairman of Walden International and Founding Managing Partner at Walden Catalyst Ventures.

If all of that means nothing to you, he also once won the same award as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su. How's that for context?

Intel's Interim Co-CEO Michelle Johnston Holthaus holding a Panther Lake processor sample at its CES 2025 keynote — Intel's outgoing interim Co-CEO Michelle Johnston Holthaus at CES 2025, soon to be CEO of Intel Products. (Image credit: Intel Corporation)

It's not going to be an easy first year for Tan, however. Intel is in a bit of a state, as it was for most of previous CEO Pat Gelsinger's time, with more rumours about who might be buying it than leaks for its next-generation products right now. The current rumour is Intel Foundry competitor TSMC, trying to convince Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom to go splitsies with it. That feels like a long-shot, but massive mergers and buyouts hardly ever make much sense to me.

Whether Tan has any interest in selling any part of Intel off is what to look out for in the coming months, and potentially years. The board might like Tan for his potential to take Intel back into big profits, but just as easily Tan might be the sort of character to cut their losses and spin out or sell a part of the business in the face of a good deal. We just don't know yet.

We do know what the Intel board think: "Lip-Bu is an exceptional leader whose technology industry expertise, deep relationships across the product and foundry ecosystems, and proven track record of creating shareholder value is exactly what Intel needs in its next CEO," says Frank D. Yeary, who was the acting executive chair for Intel's board while searching for a new CEO.

An Intel Core i7 14700K with an Intel Raptor Lake branded box. — (Image credit: Future)

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What we should maybe hope for from Tan is a commitment to gaming graphics cards (don't let us down, Tan) and to get Intel's desktop CPUs back up to speed with the competition. AMD's X3D chips are killing it, but there's hardly enough to go around.

And here's what Tan has to say:

"Intel has a powerful and differentiated computing platform, a vast customer installed base and a robust manufacturing footprint that is getting stronger by the day as we rebuild our process technology roadmap,” Tan continued. “I am eager to join the company and build upon the work the entire Intel team has been doing to position our business for the future."

Also, Tan mentions some stuff about shareholder value, which crops up a lot in the Intel press release announcing the move. That will be a big priority for any Intel CEO now, as Intel's share price has plummeted where other similar companies' (Nvidia, AMD) have skyrocketed. That's not that interesting to me though—bring me more affordable GPUs!

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Jacob earned his first byline writing for his own tech blog, before graduating into breaking things professionally at PCGamesN. Now he's managing editor of the hardware team at PC Gamer, and you'll usually find him testing the latest components or building a gaming PC.

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