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Intel CEO Tan restructures leadership, names new AI chief, memo says
Intel's executive team had previously included many business unit leaders, with technical leaders often layers below the CEO.
Intel's new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, who had taken the top job just last month, is now flattening the leadership team, with important chip groups reporting directly to him. This is one of his first major moves to turn around the Silicon Valley chipmaker which has been facing years of problems.
The semiconductor giant's executive team had previously included many business unit leaders, with technical leaders often layers below the CEO, news agency Reuters reported.
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The flattening move follows Tan's public comments of aiming to trim layers of management from the company, so that executive leadership would work more closely with its engineers.
As a result, three longtime technical executives - Rob Bruckner, Mike Hurley and Lisa Pearce - will now report to Tan, according to the report which cited a company memo from him.
"This supports our emphasis on becoming an engineering-focused company and will give me visibility into what’s needed to compete and win," the report quoted Tan as having written in the memo.
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He added that "It’s clear to me that organizational complexity and bureaucratic processes have been slowly suffocating the culture of innovation we need to win" and that “it takes too long to make decisions.”
“New ideas are not given room or resources to incubate,” he wrote. “And unnecessary silos lead to inefficient execution.”
The memo stated that Intel's data centre group, AI chip group, and personal-computer chip group, which Michelle Johnston Holthaus earlier oversaw, will now report directly to Tan.
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Tan succeeds Pat Gelsinger who left last year after disagreements with the board of directors on how to turn the company around after years of manufacturing and product missteps.
The biggest challenge facing Tan is competing with Nvidia, which has now become the dominant supplier of AI chips. Intel had failed to settle on a coherent strategy to challenge Nvidia despite acquiring several AI chip startups.
