Re-engineering the Semiconductor Supply Chain with Intel CEO Lip Bu Tan
Episode publishedPodcast: No Priors: Artificial Intellig...No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups
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Nine of the 10 company I invest, halfway they change their business plan because market have changed. Yeah. So I like to have entrepreneur as team, not just one person. I always believed in when I was at Cadence and also at Intel is first of all you crawl and be humble, listen to customer. And then first step for me is to strengthen my balance sheet, focus on the products, and I really simplify the product, listen to the customer, and then drive the next generation leadership products. And then right now, the agentic AI and influence CPU become highly in demand. And so in some way, I'm happy.
Hi, listeners. Welcome back to No Priors. Today, Elad and I are here with Lip Bu Tan, the legendary investor from Walden, then CEO of Cadence, now CEO of Intel. We talk about his plan to transform Intel, having the US government as a major shareholder, how to be an amazing semiconductors investor, and whether or not we can make chips in The United States. Welcome, Lip Bu. Lip Bu, it's great to see you. We'll start with the obvious question. This is a really hard job to go be CEO of this incredibly important American semis company. Why take the job at all?
It's a good question. I'm 66, and people thought, wow, you should retire rather than taking on this hardest job in the industry. And so a couple of reasons. One is this is an iconic company, and it's so important for the semiconductor ecosystem and also so important for United States. And so I decided to do one more after Cadence.
A lot has happened in this past year. What has been most surprising to you?
Well, the most surprising that I don't learn from my previous job or even training is one day early morning, President Trump asking me to resign, and conflict of interest, and there's no exceptions. And so I had to convince myself, first of all, I don't need this job. I do it purely to save Intel. And so take that personal issue out of the way. Then I figure out, what can I do to be helpful to Intel? And so good news is I have a meeting, you know, Thursday morning, and then Monday, I have the meeting. And then he listened to me like I have a chance to explain myself. And I was born in Malaysia
And now you have the chance to do the work. When you said, you know, the job is to save Intel. It's a really important company. What does that look like to you? What does Intel winning or thriving look like?
Yeah. I just passed fourteen months. A lot of things happened in this fourteen months. So a couple of things. One is to change the culture and then clearly want to drive more accountability. And also in terms of decision making, had to be faster. You know, I'm so used to startup culture, and you move fast in the speed of light and going to have that bureaucracy layer of layer of meeting. And so something that I change accountability, listened to the customer, and the customer delighted. Someone like Lipo, so humble, willing to listen, and then address some of the problem that they face, and th
Yeah. I mean, you've been in the business for so long and, you know, you've you've run Cadence for, I think, twelve years before this. And so
Thirteen years. Thirteen years. Sorry. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Didn't more years as executive chairman. So fifteen years. Fifteen years. So I signed up for three months Three months, so right now, I'd be very careful. The moment you said, I'll just do it for three months, it turned out to be fifteen years.
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