High-tech industry legend leaves Intel board — Intel's stock dropped 6% since the announcement

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Needs to 'reprioritize various commitments.'

Intel
(Image credit: Intel)

Lip-Bu Tan, a seasoned figure in the high-tech industry, has stepped down from Intel's board of directors after two years of service, according to the company's filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. His departure, effective immediately, comes at a critical time for Intel as the company faces financial difficulties and implements major organizational changes that involve laying off some 15,000 or more employees.

"I am grateful for the opportunity to serve on the Intel Board of Directors," said Lip-Bu Tan after informing Intel about his decision on Monday. "This is a personal decision based on a need to reprioritize various commitments and I remain supportive of the company and its important work."

SeekingAlpha reports that Intel's stock dropped 6.1% following Intel's announcement of Lip-Bu Tan's departure.

Lip-Bu Tan, a former CEO and the current executive chairman of Cadence, a leading supplier of electronic design automation tools and IP, joined Intel's board of directors in 2022 after the company announced its IDM 2.0 efforts to become a significant contract maker of semiconductors.

Lip-Bu Tan's investment company, Walden International, has invested in semiconductor, alternative energy, and digital media companies and startups in the U.S. and Asia, including Ambarella, Creative Technology, S3 Graphics, and Sina Corp. Sina owns Weibo (a microblogging site in China) and four other business lines. Given Lip-Bu Tan's experience at Cadence and his investment company, he was a treasured board member at Intel.

Intel's board has 12 directors, led by chairman Frank D. Yeary, who spent his entire career in the financial industry. In fact, among the board of directors of Intel, two have an academic background in electrical and computer engineering and experience in a semiconductor company; one has worked in the PC industry; and two—Pat Gelsinger and Stacy Smith—are either existing or former executives at Intel. Others have worked outside of the semiconductor industry.

Intel's stock tumbled by about 30%, erasing around $39 billion in market capitalization in just a few days, from late July to early August. On July 31, Intel's market cap was $130.86 billion at the close of the NYSE. After reports of massive layoffs, it dropped to $123.96 billion on August 1. Following Intel's financial report and a substantial $1.6 billion loss, the valuation fell further to $91.86 billion. Intel's current market cap at press time is $88.43 billion, highlighting that the company has lost over half its market value since the beginning of the year.

Anton Shilov
Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

10 Comments Comment from the forums
  • vanadiel007
    If they don't start making changes, this will not end well for Intel and the PC gaming industry as we need competition to avoid soaring prices.
    Reply
  • ezst036
    Intel is in big trouble.
    Reply
  • gg83
    ezst036 said:
    Intel is in big trouble.
    Do you see Intel getting hammered more? I heard the 18A node is making great progress. I guess we still don't know how much the 13th/14th gen chips will cost the company yet.
    Reply
  • Amdlova
    vanadiel007 said:
    If they don't start making changes, this will not end well for Intel and the PC gaming industry as we need competition to avoid soaring prices.
    Gaming industry is dead :) If intel dies nvidia eat all market don't worry.
    Reply
  • ThisIsMe
    vanadiel007 said:
    If they don't start making changes, this will not end well for Intel and the PC gaming industry as we need competition to avoid soaring prices.

    They are making changes. The problem is that any change they make is cast in a negative light by parroted news articles that see everything they do as “well this can’t be good” and twist the narrative to support the view.
    Reply
  • vanadiel007
    ThisIsMe said:
    They are making changes. The problem is that any change they make is cast in a negative light by parroted news articles that see everything they do as “well this can’t be good” and twist the narrative to support the view.

    They should discontinue their GPU adventure as they are too far behind compared to the 2 main market players. Yet they continue with it. That's not a good business decision.

    This is a time to use their strengths, not to branch into new business segments.
    They should leverage their server know how, there integrated graphics division, their laptop processor solutions, etc...
    Instead I keep reading about yet another new business segment they are entering.

    It reminds me very much about what happened to Commodore after the Amiga 500.
    Reply
  • dalek1234
    Can somebody translate 'reprioritize various commitments.' into the actual truth?

    When Jim Keller left Intel he said it was for "personal reasons", which recently was debunked by MLID who was told by Intel employees that Keller left because of Internal Intel BS of sorts.
    Reply
  • ThisIsMe
    vanadiel007 said:
    They should discontinue their GPU adventure as they are too far behind compared to the 2 main market players. Yet they continue with it. That's not a good business decision.

    This is a time to use their strengths, not to branch into new business segments.
    They should leverage their server know how, there integrated graphics division, their laptop processor solutions, etc...
    Instead I keep reading about yet another new business segment they are entering.

    It reminds me very much about what happened to Commodore after the Amiga 500.

    Now go back and reread what you posted. Intel needs that product to continue being competitive. It’s primarily competition in data center are nVidia and AMD. Both of which can offer a full top-down solution because they make/sell everything they need. nVidia is so overly bloated in market value they can more than afford to move into the data center CPU market, which is exactly what they have been doing. So you have two competing options that provide CPU, GPU, and fabric. Intel will continue to lose data center market share until it can provide a full market stack.

    And to claim they are “so far behind compared to the 2 main market players” after only a single generation product release is asinine. Their products were physically competitive with 3/4 of the current products in the space at the time of their release. Sure, it’s well known that the software was weak but you learn and you improve. Giving up after so much investment and a mostly successful single generation would be too costly.

    I understand if you’re the type of investor that wants to make a quick buck after only a few months, but this is the tech sector. It takes years or decades to develop and streamline solid products. If that’s what you are then find another sector to invest in. This market is where you invest because you believe in the inevitable future outcome three or more iterations down the road.
    Reply
  • DavidLejdar
    If needed, I can take the job. First thing, I'd put the focus a bit more back on the consumer market. You know, consumer market, as in the guys, who may not spend much at once, but do so somewhat regularly, even if not, uhm, "encouraged to" by MS for Win11.

    And what would that entail? Foremost sitting down with OEMs and PC case makers, to talk about an improved standard for modern motherboards and eventual standard for PC Cases - with then putting AMD in the CC.

    Similar then also in regard to smaller PCs, such as thin client for office use, etc.

    Which isn't to say, that B2B in terms of e.g. supplying an car manufacturer with some of the technological products needed, that such isn't an interesting field. But it isn't just microtechnology, which can be somewhat complex.

    In example, Intel in Magdeburg (which isn't far from, where I currently live, btw). Assuming that one could already rely on a specific date, of when the production starts, to provide i.e. an car manufacturer with chips e.g. for a new car model, that usually implies that they have their production line also set up. And in that context, it already needs skilled persons, to be in talks with potential clients - because the way that works is somewhat different to the "chipset-CPU" model in PCs, as the individual client needs are usually for a custom product.

    Like, that new car model, that may be designed foremostly for customers in cities and in rural areas for short distance travel - and as such it doesn't need large batteries, as the speed is limited and range also. But the car may still want to be a modern design, including features such as a UBC-C port on the passenger's side of the car. And there may be some new features about the battery as well, and so on.
    Reply
  • vanadiel007
    ThisIsMe said:
    Now go back and reread what you posted. Intel needs that product to continue being competitive. It’s primarily competition in data center are nVidia and AMD. Both of which can offer a full top-down solution because they make/sell everything they need. nVidia is so overly bloated in market value they can more than afford to move into the data center CPU market, which is exactly what they have been doing. So you have two competing options that provide CPU, GPU, and fabric. Intel will continue to lose data center market share until it can provide a full market stack.

    And to claim they are “so far behind compared to the 2 main market players” after only a single generation product release is asinine. Their products were physically competitive with 3/4 of the current products in the space at the time of their release. Sure, it’s well known that the software was weak but you learn and you improve. Giving up after so much investment and a mostly successful single generation would be too costly.

    I understand if you’re the type of investor that wants to make a quick buck after only a few months, but this is the tech sector. It takes years or decades to develop and streamline solid products. If that’s what you are then find another sector to invest in. This market is where you invest because you believe in the inevitable future outcome three or more iterations down the road.

    To say Intel is competing in the GPU market, is laughable. They compete and are the #1 in integrated (laptop) GPU's and have been for a long time. They beat both Nvidia and AMD in that market segment.

    But they are not even a competitive spark in the consumer GPU market, let alone the Datacenter GPU market.
    Just go look at any hardware survey, like the Steam hardware survey for example. Intel holds a 7.57 % market share in GPU's...

    Now on the other hand they hold a commanding 75% of the CPU market, and they used to hold a commanding lead in the datacenter CPU space.

    If they are planning on producing ARC GPU's for datacenters, they will go bankrupt. They do not have the funds to develop and make the jump from consumer to Datacenter GPU.

    There are very few people who use an ARC based GPU solution as it is, and that is not going to change anytime soon if ever.

    That is why I said they should concentrate on integrated graphics, CPU's, datacenter CPU's and all there other ventures especially in the server market.
    Reply