The list of candidates for Intel’s next permanent CEO is lengthy, but the Intel board may be more focused on finding outside companies to buy up all or part of Intel.
“Intel is still better on its own than being acquired by others,” said IDC analyst Mario Morales in an interview. The current tension, nearly four months after CEO Pat Gelsinger was fired, is whether a future CEO would be in charge of all or part of Intel, controlling just the design side if the fab side is split off, or variations of that scenario.
“The Intel administration is making so many pivots,” he said, which makes it hard to surmise that a a push for the next permanent CEO is currently the board’s main focus. “This is the most challenging time for Intel and it can’t make the wrong decision. The board has to change. It’s not pushing for a new CEO now and is pushing for a breakup that distracts employees and investors. They need a leader to bring together the entire company.”
Morales doubts either interim co-CEO would be suitable as the permanent pick to run Intel in its current form today. David Zinsner, EVP and CFO, and Michel Johnston Holthaus, CEO of Intel Products, serve as the interim co-CEOs, appointed in December after Gelsinger’s departure.
Another name not widely mentioned is Lisa Su, the current CEO of AMD. She would be an “ideal candidate to take on the Intel challenge,” Morales said. "Her ability at turning around AMD is her highest qualification for heading up Intel.”
“She would not be won with money, as she’s already making a lot. It would be more about her accomplishing this at the top of her career,” Morales said.
He also named as good candidates Steve Mollenkopf, former CEO of Qualcomm until 2021, and Sanjay Jha, formerly CEO of Motorola Mobility and of CEO GlobalFoundries and COO at Qualcomm.
Su, Mollenkopf and Jha all have strong engineering credentials that are needed at Intel, he said.
Other candidates for Intel CEO emerged right after Gelsinger’s departure. In December, analysts mentioned the name of Lip-Bu Tan, former Intel board member who resigned in August 2024 after clashes with Gelsinger. He is former CEO of Cadence Design Systems.
Also mentioned: Matt Murphy, CEO of Marvel; Stacy Smith, member of the Intel board; Renee James, founder of Ampere Computing; Hock Tan, CEO of Broadcom; Johny Srouji, Apple’s chip executive; Gregory Bryant, an executive at Analog Devices; Kirk Skaugen, an executive at Lenovo and former head of Intel’s server chip division.
IDC evaluates several buyout scenarios by AMD, Qualcomm, Broadcom, TSMC
In a note to clients shared with Fierce, Morales described buyout scenarios for Intel, including AMD, Qualcomm and Broadcom. AMD has the most overlap in terms of markets served by Intel and a combined entity would have a 90% share of both the PC market and CPU server market, which would raise potential antitrust concerns.
Qualcomm, by comparison, would have far less product overlap except for IoT and automotive, he noted. Broadcom could turn Intel’s product group into a “cash cow” by investing in product development at a potentially slower rate while extracting value for core IP, like access to Intel’s X86 to be used for customer products for hyperscalers, Morales said.
As for TSMC, Morales told Fierce, “I don’t believe TSMC should touch anything Intel has.” In his note to clients, however, he said TSMC could leverage Intel’s advanced packaging in New Mexico to support strong demand for HPC and AI platforms using 2.5D/3D packaging to drive scale and performance.