By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake:

Leadership stability is paramount for Arrow Electronics as it faces fierce digital competition and falling revenue. With its CEO seat in flux, Arrow risks weakened investor confidence and operational setbacks. The company’s future hinges on quickly securing trusted leadership to drive digital transformation, restore profitability, and protect its standing in a rapidly evolving global electronics supply chain.

The abrupt leadership shakeup at Arrow Electronics, marked by the departure of CEO Sean Kerins and the swift appointment of Bill Austen as interim chief executive, lands at a precarious time for the company and the broader electronics distribution market.

Such abrupt transitions can threaten stability at the executive level, particularly for a global player navigating tight margins, intensifying competition, and evolving customer expectations. When leadership changes come suddenly and without explicit rationale, they naturally breed uncertainty among institutional investors, partners, and the workforce.

Nearly five years ago, we cautioned Arrow Electronics in a LinkedIn post (Arrow Electronics: Who Should Succeed Long as CEO?) against defaulting to an internal succession plan, arguing that while company continuity has value, there are times when looking outside for CEO talent can be transformative.

Read More »Arrow Must Look Externally for a New CEO

By Bolaji Ojo

STMicroelectronics N.V. has unveiled plans to enhance its technological processes by advancing next-generation chip manufacturing technology at its Tours facility in France. The company said it has committed over $60 million to launch a cutting-edge Panel-Level Packaging (PLP) pilot line, with operations slated to commence in the third quarter of 2026.

The initiative is part of ST’s broader strategy to reshape its manufacturing footprint, focusing on advanced integration and packaging methods that bolster efficiency, flexibility, and scale. The new PLP line will feature collaboration among multidisciplinary experts, including process engineers and data scientists, working to redefine chip packaging and test technology across a broad range of applications, spanning radio frequency (RF), analog, power, and digital products.

“This investment in Tours advances an innovative approach to chip packaging and test manufacturing, aiming to boost productivity and flexibility for deployment across our entire product portfolio,” said Fabio Gualandris, president of quality, manufacturing, and technology at ST, in a statement. “It marks a significant milestone in our roadmap for heterogeneous integration — an efficient new path for scalable chip integration.”

Read More »ST Expands Next-Generation Chip Packaging in France

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake: President Trump is emasculating the leadership of America’s technology companies, meddling so deeply in their strategic management and sales generation efforts that they might as well be taking detailed instructions from the White House. Trump is bending trade laws to suit his freewheeling ways, acts unmatched by any of his predecessors as president. The technology industry must find ways to curb this intrusion.  

Donald Trump is president of the United States, a noteworthy achievement. In the political world. The presidency does not confer entrepreneurial experience or sagacity, however. By slapping tariffs on trading partners, and threatening to jack up interest on their operations or – in the case of Intel Corp. asking its CEO to resign – Trump is rewriting the duties and curbing the powers of technology companies’ OEMs or chief decision makers, transmitting the view that they are lining up for instructions at the White House.

The American president does not have Jensen Huang’s business pedigree. His entrepreneurial history rests on a far lower rung of the business ladder compared with the experiences of Huang, CEO of Nvidia, Lisa Su (CEO at AMD), and Lip-Bu Tan, (CEO of Intel Corp. Yet, Mr. Trump has inserted himself with reckless naivety into how these companies are managed. His actions do not bode well for the companies he has wrestled power from and, by extension, the rest of the technology world.

Read More »American Tech CEOs are being Neutered

By Bolaji Ojo

The story of Intel Corp. is one of American ingenuity sullied by a stubborn combination of naivety and obtuseness at the top. The company’s troubles didn’t emerge out of nowhere. The coincidence brewed of technology and innovations shifts aren’t at play here. Rather, Intel is in the muck it has sunk into today because it couldn’t escape its shiny legacy.

While Craig Barrett, Intel’s CEO from 1998 to 2005 and chairman through 2009, is often lauded for presiding over strong profits and technological advances, it’s time to confront the inconvenient truth: Barrett cannot wash his hands of the mess that Intel has now become. He helped lay its foundations, missed seismic shifts in the semiconductor industry, and imposed strategic inertia that successive CEOs failed to overcome.

Barrett’s tenure coincided with extraordinary shifts in the global electronics landscape, the very sort that demands radical leadership. Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, the rise of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) reshaped the competitive terrain, as it steadily built an empire in contract chipmaking (foundry services) for a new wave of fabless semiconductor companies. Meanwhile, the mainstreaming of mobile devices signaled the decline of the personal computer as the centerpiece of consumer electronics.

Yet, instead of steering Intel towards these growing markets, Barrett and his lieutenants doubled down on PC-centric strategies. Intel’s world-class fabrication facilities, which were once envied by rivals for their scale and capability, remained closed off to outsiders. The “Intel Inside” mantra was a badge of pride, but also a mask for missed opportunities. Intel made massive investments in communications businesses, running into billions of dollars, but failed to turn these into outstanding successes or footholds in fast-growing markets.

Read More »Craig Barrett’s Intel Faux Pas

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake: Artificial Intelligence has raised semiconductors to a height unimagined only a few years ago, but as chipmakers rocket to the top of the global equity markets, the burning questions come up: How long will this stratospheric rise continue; what happens when demand for AI chips stalls and what should semiconductor suppliers do to stay relevant in the new economy?

Nvidia Corp.’s drastic rise to become the world’s most valuable publicly traded company is emblematic of a seismic shift: AI chips have ascended to the position of “the new oil,” powering a sprawling ecosystem of generative AI, big data analytics, and automation. But the questions gnawing at everyone aren’t being answered now because most people don’t yet want to examine how long this AI-fueled semiconductor surge will last, the extent of changes taking place in the market’s trajectory, and what could trigger a change in direction.

Many semiconductor industry executives appear ready to weigh in on how their companies are reshaping the dynamics of the global economy, though. At Nvidia’s latest developers’ conference, Jensen Huang, founder and CEO, addressed thousands of developers and industry leaders on the gravity of what his company helped catalyze.

“We are witnessing the dawn of a new industrial revolution,” Huang said. “an AI-driven era that’s being built on silicon.” That’s difficult to dispute. Today, Nvidia is not just a tech giant. It is the giant everyone must beat to stand out. With a market capitalization that has soared past Apple’s and Microsoft’s, the firm now stands as the world’s most valuable public company, its fortunes singularly tied to the voracious appetite for artificial intelligence chips.

Yet, the questions about AI’s validity and future keep coming up. How long will the insatiable demand for AI chips last? Could we be overestimating AI’s transformative power, or, conversely, underestimating the deep dependence the global economy is developing on its silicon backbone?

Read More »AI is Nowhere Near its Zenith, but Fears Persist

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake: The stakes for power semiconductor makers in the Edge AI market are immense, encompassing billions of dollars in potential revenue, leadership in technological innovation, and a pivotal role in shaping the future of intelligent, energy-efficient devices. Those who can deliver the most advanced, dependable, and sustainable solutions stand to define the next era of electronics.

Artificial intelligence has rapidly evolved from a futuristic concept to a transformative force reshaping every sector of the global economy. But while much of the early excitement around AI centered on massive data centers and cloud-based supercomputers, the focus in recent years has shifted toward the “edge,” the network’s frontier, where data is generated and decisions must be made instantly.

Edge AI, which refers to the deployment of AI models on local devices rather than in distant clouds, is favored to drive everything from smart cameras and autonomous vehicles to industrial robots and wearable health monitors. As the intelligence of these devices grows, however, so too does the complexity of their power requirements. The race is on among semiconductor manufacturers, device makers, and system integrators to deliver energy-efficient, high-performance solutions that will define the next era of intelligent technology.

Read More »Edge AI Hangs on Power: Can Chipmakers Meet Up?