Source: Intel
By Bolaji Ojo
Intel Corp.’s new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, wants the technology world to know him and understand why he has taken one of the toughest enterprise turnaround jobs in the chip industry. So, this week, Tan narrated his story himself, offering an abridged version of his biography to attendees at Intel Vision event.
It’s Tan talking about Tan, so there isn’t a lot to add.
But just in case Tan or any of his employees and friends who have access to him happen to come across this report and wish to pass on a message. Here it is: The world cares where you have been, but only in relevance to what you are doing now and where you are headed. They would pay even less attention if what you’ve got to say has no implications for their lives.
In the case of Intel, the investment world cares solely about how and what Tan will do to revitalize the company and increase its value. Tan’s speech did not contain enough specifics about this and had too much stuff that is strikingly like what got his predecessor Patrick Gelsinger into trouble.
Tan offered the same bland information about the foundry business, adding disappointing nationalistic comments on “being the only American company that design and manufacture advanced chips.” His statement that Intel has “an essential role” in the “foundry ecosystem” sounded like statements Gelsinger made about wanting to save the Western semiconductor supply chain.
The Ojo-Yoshida Report once wrote that Gelsinger’s fiduciary duties were primarily to Intel shareholders, other investors, customers, suppliers and employees. This remains true for Mr. Tan. However, in his presentation, the Intel CEO said he was “very pleased to see the Trump administration focus on strengthening the American technology and manufacturing leadership.” That’s fine and uplifting for Americans, but it is not in his brief as Intel’s CEO.
Tan was not appointed to be a clone of Mr. Gelsinger. In fact, he was appointed to be the anti-Gelsinger but that isn’t showing so far. Finally, if Tan hasn’t noticed, the honeymoon from his appointment is already over. He is being rated already. Gelsinger had more years at the helm of Intel than the market will give Tan, so he should get on with the chief task of rescuing the company.
The edited version of Tan’s story follows. Enjoy.
I was born in Malaysia, Johor, and grew up in Singapore. I did my undergraduate studies in quantum physics, at Nanyang Technology University. Then I moved to the US and received my graduate degree in nuclear engineering at MIT. This interesting background and my education gave me a deep understanding of how to solve hard technical problems through engineering design. After the Three Mile Island nuclear accident happened [in 1979], I decided not to finish my PhD, even though I had finished all my courses.
Instead, I moved to San Francisco. My mom was very worried because (my siblings are all professors), I dropped out of school. My brother told my mom, ‘He’s okay.’ I fell in love with Silicon Valley, and I founded Walden International Group of venture funds. When I started, we were only managing $3 million and only a few family friends invested in it. I built it into a company with $5 billion under management. The name was inspired by the title of a book called Walden written by a thinker, poet and philosopher I admire, Henry David Thoreau. It’s an amazing book. One of my favorite quotes from it is: ‘Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.’ That really speaks to me. I always want to have my customer, my team, my partner, my wife, give me the truth. Likewise, they [should] also expect me to give them the truth so we can move forward as a team and fix problems.
As a venture capitalist, I always worked to find a hidden opportunity where others were not looking. When semiconductors were not popular 20 years ago, I doubled down on it. I still remember visiting two tier one venture capital firms that I respect and admire. I set up a meeting with them and started talking about semiconductors. Half of the people left; the other half was sympathetic. By the end, there were only two guys left in the room. They asked: ‘Do you have software service or AI startup that we can talk about?’ Semiconductors were not very popular.
I took a contrarian, long term view, but even some of my investors were asking if I was crazy. The tier one venture firms thought semiconductor was a sunset industry. I doubled down instead, and it paid off. Overall, I made 251 semiconductor-related investments. We have had 43 IPOs and 25 successful M&As. Then I expanded towards content creation. I was an early investor in Typeface. Most recently, I’ve been focused on generative and agentic AI, as well as applications in life sciences and medical innovation.
My experience in venture capitalism prepared me for 12 years as CEO of Cadence Design Systems when I was asked to step in as CEO to turn around the company. First, I changed the culture into that of one team and added the culture of innovation and delighting our customers, forging deep partnerships with the customer to find solutions. In addition to growing our core EDA business, I also decided that intellectual property was very important, so we made multiple acquisitions. We bought Denali (2010), Tensilica (2013) and I bought Nusemi (2017) for high-speed data transfer. This helped to accelerate our design process and raise revenue by more than 10%.
These experiences have taught me a lot. My time at Walden taught me how to build startups with small teams by focusing on what the company needs. My time at Cadence helped me to understand design methodology, foundry ecosystem and what it takes to delight customers. I also spent two years [as director] at Intel, and I learned a lot from our engineers about the problems and challenges we face, and how to fix them. This has prepared me for taking on this very challenging task to build a new Intel.
Related articles:
Intel Board Shuffle: Another Missed Opportunity
Lip-Bu Tan must split up Intel
Bolaji Ojo is publisher and managing editor of the Ojo-Yoshida Report. He can be reached at [email protected].
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