Intel's CEO reveals early hiring challenges as bankruptcy concerns deterred top talent

Summary

When Lip-Bu Tan took over as Intel CEO, the company's balance sheet was so dire that potential recruits turned him down flat, worried they'd be joining a chipmaker on the verge of going bust.Speaking at the JP Morgan Global Technology, Media and Communications Conference on Tuesday, he said: "I tried to recruit some talent. They said 'It's almost a bankrupt company, why should I join you?'" Fixing that became his first priority. That effort has since paid off as Lip-Bu secured equity investment from the Trump administration, which converted funds from the CHIPS program in exchange for a stake. He also drew on long-standing personal relationships, with Nvidia CEO Jenson Huang committing $5 billion and Softbank's Masayoshi Son - a former Intel board member - signing on as a backer. "So far, knock on wood, I made money for them, and they're quite happy," Lip-Bu said. The stronger balance sheet has since enabled Intel to buy back a stake it had sold to Apollo, reducing earnings-per-share dilution in the process, he added. Now, a year into the job, Lip-Bu is betting on agentic AI, inference workloads and a bold chipmaking roadmap to complete Intel's revival - looking beyond the upcoming 14A process node to future 10A and 7A chipmaking technology.When asked for a progress report on the process technology Intel uses to manufacture its products, Lip-Bu said the recently introduced 18A is seeing a 7 percent per month yield improvement, and the next-gen 14A node is "ahead of schedule" compared to the end of the year target."And now I'm starting to look at the 10A, 7A, the roadmap," Lip-Bu said."People don't go to you just for one node. They're looking for the roadmap for the future. So we want to build a long-term business. And then we can drive the efficiency, the defect density, and then we can go to that Rule of 45, how to drive the operating efficiency, the profitability, cash generation."Intel's 18A and 14A processes refer to 18 and 14 angstroms, and as there are 10 angs...