Intel chief executive officer Bob Swan is set to step down from his role at the tech company on February 15. VMWare CEO Pat Gelsinger is going to be his successor, the chipmaker has announced. Swan served as the CEO of the company for almost two years as he was named for the top post in January 2019. He even served as interim CEO for around seven months and also in the capacity as a chief financial officer since 2016. His exit comes at a time when the semiconductor company went through the most challenging year. Swan himself said that the year 2020 had been the most challenging year of his career.
The company had a tough year and it failed to deliver its next generation of more powerful and smaller 7-nanometer chips. In the middle of the year, Intel announced the new deadline and said that the production of these chips would begin in late 2022 or early 2023. This is a delay of around one year when compared to the previous schedule. It is a setback for the company as its biggest competitor AMD has already been selling its 7-nanometer processors. This was one of the major blow company suffered during Swan’s tenure. Apart from this, Apple broke 15 years of partnership with Intel last year after the company announced that it will use its own proprietary chips in Mac computers.
Following these developments, Third Point hedge fund of Dan Loeb urged board members of Intel to explore ‘strategic alternatives.’ In a letter to Intel, it also asked the chipmaker to divest from ‘failed acquisitions’ to reduce losses. It is important to mention that some reports claim that the firm recently took a roughly USD 1 billion stake in Intel. Following the announcement of the departure of Swan, Loeb applauded him for the decision. Loeb said the move is the right thing for all stakeholders.
