Intel hires former SK hynix chief Seok-Hee Lee to lead advanced packaging push for AI chips

Intel Foundry Taps Memory Industry Veteran for Critical Packaging Role

Intel hires former SK hynix chief Seok-Hee Lee as executive vice president of Intel Foundry, placing the semiconductor veteran in charge of advanced packaging, system integration, and all back-end technology development and manufacturing 1

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. Lee reports directly to CEO Lip-Bu Tan, and his appointment marks a structural shift as Intel establishes advanced packaging as a focused business with dedicated leadership 2

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. The move comes just three weeks after Lee resigned from battery maker SK On, citing health reasons, signaling the urgency Intel places on this hire 1

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Lee spent roughly a decade at Intel earlier in his career, working as an engineer from 2000 to 2010 before ascending to leadership roles across the Korean chip industry, including the top position at SK hynix, one of the world's two largest suppliers of high-bandwidth memory 1

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. Tan credited Lee with "deep expertise in leading complex, high-scale technology and manufacturing organizations," emphasizing that his insights would help Intel "tightly couple leading-edge logic, memory, networking, and other components" for foundry customers 3

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Advanced Packaging and System Integration Becomes Standalone Business

The organizational restructuring splits responsibilities within Intel Foundry, with Naga Chandrasekaran narrowing his focus to front-end work on the Intel 18A and 14A nodes while Seok-Hee Lee takes command of the back-end 1

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. Longtime executive Navid Shahriari is retiring after 37 years with the company 1

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. This foundry expansion strategy reflects Intel's recognition that advanced packaging has become a critical battleground for next-generation AI systems and high-performance computing systems 2

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Putting a former memory chief over packaging aligns precisely with where Intel's back-end ambitions are headed. HBM stacks sit alongside logic dies inside the same package on every modern AI accelerator, and joining those two components together is exactly what Lee now oversees 1

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. Last month, reports emerged that SK hynix was testing Intel's EMIB packaging for HBM integration, sending both companies' shares higher 1

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Billion-Dollar Revenue Opportunity Amid Foundry Business Struggles

Tan named EMIB-T and HBI as the technologies Intel intends to ramp to high volume under Lee's leadership 1

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. EMIB-T adds through-silicon vias to Intel's embedded bridge for higher power delivery and HBM4-class bandwidth, rolling out in production fabs this year 1

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. Intel has positioned the EMIB family against TSMC CoWoS, whose lines have been oversubscribed for more than two years, and is reportedly in talks with Google and Amazon to package their custom AI chips 1

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The stakes for the unit Lee is inheriting are substantial. Intel Foundry lost $10.3 billion on $17.8 billion of revenue in 2025, yet CFO David Zinsner has said packaging revenue could exceed $1 billion at gross margins near 40%, with prepaid hyperscaler commitments reaching into the billions 1

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. Korean trade press, including the Seoul Economic Daily, has framed Lee's appointment around Intel's difficulty securing yields on its proprietary back-end processes, the kind of high-volume manufacturing problem he managed for decades in memory 1

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. The hire follows Intel's April recruitment of Samsung foundry veteran Shawn Han, underscoring the company's aggressive talent acquisition strategy as it seeks to rebuild its foundry business and compete with leading contract chipmakers 2

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