Intel Reshapes Leadership with AI-Focused Hires in Turnaround Strategy

Intel appoints engineering hires as part of CEO Tan's turnaround strategy

June 18 (Reuters) - Intel (INTC.O), opens new tab hired three chip industry executives in engineering and networking roles on Wednesday, as part of CEO Lip-Bu Tan's plans to overhaul top management and turn around the embattled chipmaker. Tan's plans include trimming the company's large workforce, hiring new leadership, focusing on customer satisfaction and ensuring the foundry business succeeds. Tan started to flatten Intel's leadership team since taking over as top boss in March with many important chip groups reporting directly into him, including sales veteran Greg Ernst, who was appointed chief revenue officer. Ernst previously served as Intel's head of U.S. sales and marketing operations. In keeping with its plans to become more engineering-focused, the company also tapped Srinivasan Iyengar, Jean-Didier Allegrucci and Shailendra Desai to lead engineering roles. "Greg, Srini, J-D and Shailendra are highly accomplished leaders with strong reputations across our ecosystem and they will each play important roles as we position our business for the future," Tan said. Iyengar joined Intel from Cadence Design Systems (CDNS.O), opens new tab and will lead a new customer engineering center, while Allegrucci, a former Rain AI executive, will manage the development of the AI System on Chip engineering. Desai, who joined Intel from Google, will head the development of new AI chip architectures. Iyengar will report into Tan, while Allegrucci and Desai will report into Sachin Katti, Intel's chief technology and AI officer. Intel has also reshuffled its board to make it more chip-industry-focused. Three board members did not stand for reelection at its 2025 annual meeting. Reporting by Zaheer Kachwala in Bengaluru; Editing by Pooja Desai Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Suggested Topics:Artificial Intelligence

Intel Reshuffles Leadership in Lead-Up to July Layoffs | AIM

Intel has restructured its leadership team in support of CEO Lip‑Bu Tan's aggressive post‑March turnaround plan. Intel on Wednesday announced the appointment of three vice presidents to strengthen the leadership and align with the company's goal of building a consumer-centric engineering powerhouse. Greg Ernst, Intel's newly appointed chief revenue officer, has been with the company since 2005 and has led the company's US marketing since 2018. Srinivasan Iyengar, Jean-Didier Allegrucci and Shailendra Desai have been appointed as engineering vice presidents. Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Intel, said, "Greg, Srini, J-D and Shailendra are highly accomplished leaders with strong reputations across our ecosystem, and will each play important roles as we position our business for the future." Lip-Bu Tan was appointed in March after Pat Gelsinger's departure. Under Gelsinger's three-year tenure, the company's stock had declined by over 50%. The split between the foundry and design business had emerged as a contentious issue, which served as a catalyst for a leadership change. Iyengar comes from Cadence Design Systems, Tan's former workplace, where he led global silicon engineering. Allegrucci, prior to being appointed as VP of AI system on Chip (SoC), contributed to AI silicon engineering at both Rain AI and Apple. Desai, as VP of AI fabric and networking, will be leading the development of innovative SoC architectures for Intel's AI GPUs. Interestingly, none of the VPs are based out of Oregon, Intel's largest site. Meanwhile, the company's top researchers, Ann Kelleher and Sanjay Natarajan, announced their retirement this month. Intel, reeling from a nearly $19 billion loss and a $821 million Q1 deficit, is set to cut 15-20% of its foundry workforce starting mid‑July, with no severance or voluntary buyouts; layoffs will be based on performance and strategic fit. Layoffs will focus on factory, support, and mid‑management roles, particularly in Oregon, while sparing core engineering teams, as CEO Lip‑Bu Tan continues a major restructuring amid stiff PC/server demand and AI‑chip competition

Intel appoints engineering hires as part of CEO Tan's turnaround strategy

Intel hired three chip industry executives in engineering and networking roles on Wednesday, as part of CEO Lip-Bu Tan's plans to overhaul top management and turn around the embattled chipmaker. Tan's plans include trimming the company's large workforce, hiring new leadership, focusing on customer satisfaction and ensuring the foundry business succeeds. Tan started to flatten Intel's leadership team since taking over as top boss in March with many important chip groups reporting directly into him, including sales veteran Greg Ernst, who was appointed chief revenue officer. Ernst previously served as Intel's head of U.S. sales and marketing operations. In keeping with its plans to become more engineering-focused, the company also tapped Srinivasan Iyengar, Jean-Didier Allegrucci and Shailendra Desai to lead engineering roles. "Greg, Srini, J-D and Shailendra are highly accomplished leaders with strong reputations across our ecosystem and they will each play important roles as we position our business for the future," Tan said. Iyengar joined Intel from Cadence Design Systems and will lead a new customer engineering center, while Allegrucci, a former Rain AI executive, will manage the development of the AI System on Chip engineering. Desai, who joined Intel from Google, will head the development of new AI chip architectures. Iyengar will report into Tan, while Allegrucci and Desai will report into Sachin Katti, Intel's chief technology and AI officer. Intel has also reshuffled its board to make it more chip-industry-focused. Three board members did not stand for reelection at its 2025 annual meeting.

Intel Names Greg Ernst CRO, Hires Three Engineering Leaders

The semiconductor giant names 25-year sales veteran Greg Ernst chief revenue officer and the head of its Sales and Marketing Group while hiring three engineering veterans who previously worked at Apple, Google and Cadence Design Systems to lead AI and custom chip efforts. Intel said Wednesday that it has named 25-year sales veteran Greg Ernst chief revenue officer and hired three outsider engineering veterans to lead custom and AI chip efforts. As chief revenue officer, Ernst will continue to lead Intel's Sales and Marketing Group, a responsibility he has held since last month following the resignation of Chief Commercial Officer Christoph Schell, who is expected to leave this month. [Related: Intel Loses Data Center And Public Sector Sales Leaders] To boost efforts designing custom chips for customers, the semiconductor giant hired Srinivasan Iyengar, a silicon engineering leader at Cadence Design Systems, to lead a new customer engineering center of excellence as senior vice president and fellow. Iyengar and Ernst (pictured above) will report directly to Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan as part of his executive team. To support its AI strategy, the company hired Jean-Didier Allegrucci, a longtime chip designer who spent 17 years at Apple, as vice president of AI system-on-chip (SoC) engineering; and Shailendra Desai, who led silicon engineering, architecture design and platform solutions for multiple mobile SoC designs at Google, as vice president of AI fabric and networking. Allegrucci -- referred by his first initials "J-D" -- and Desai will report to Sachin Katti, who was appointed in April to lead Intel's AI strategy as chief AI and technology officer. "We see significant opportunities ahead to strengthen our product offerings and meet the changing needs of our customers," Tan said in a statement. "Greg, Srini, J-D and Shailendra are highly accomplished leaders with strong reputations across our ecosystem, and they will each play important roles as we position our business for the future," he added. The executive moves were announced as Tan, who became Intel's CEO in March, pushes for tectonic shifts within the beleaguered chipmaker, including a new round of mass layoffs that will reportedly target up to 20 percent of factory workers and an unknown number of employees in other divisions. These job cuts are expected to happen as part of what Intel has called a move by Tan to streamline the organization, eliminate management layers and enable faster decision-making in his bid to turn around the company. An Intel spokesperson told CRN on Tuesday that the company is "taking steps to become a leaner, faster and more efficient company," as it had previously announced. In a Wednesday post on LinkedIn, Ernst said he is taking over the Sales and Marketing Group (SMG) at a "pivotal time" for the company, which will put an emphasis on engaging with customers and partners on an engineering level. "The foundation of our engagement with customers will be an engineering-to-engineering engagement that fosters innovation for our partners," he wrote, adding that "executing with partners and customers" will be a top priority. "There is progress to make, trust to build, and we're all-in to help our customers and partners win with Intel," Ernst said near the end of his post. Before Ernst became interim chief commercial officer to lead SMG in May, he had served as corporate vice president and general manager of Americas sales, which includes the company's sales efforts with channel partners. When Tan appointed Ernst as interim chief commercial officer in April, the CEO called him a "people-first, customer-centric executive with nearly 20 years of Intel sales experience" in a memo to employees seen by CRN. At the time, Tan said Intel was evaluating for "best long-term succession plan" for SMG. "He and I have been spending time together as we do deep dives on key accounts, and I look forward to working more closely with him going forward," Tan wrote in the memo. SMG's previous leader, Schell, was appointed chief commercial officer by former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger in 2022. Schell announced in late April that he was resigning to become CEO of German automation company Kuka. During his tenure, Schell, a former HP Inc. executive, oversaw major changes to SMG, including a significant reduction in costs and headcount that were carried out as part of Gelsinger's move last year to slash Intel's workforce by more than 15 percent and reduce spending by over $10 billion in response to deteriorating financial conditions. When Intel announced the job cuts last August, the company told SMG employees that it would cut the division's costs by more than 35 percent, CRN reported at the time. These cuts hit Intel's global partner organization, which reduced direct partner coverage and reworked its market development funds while it increased overall partner funding, Intel Global Channel Chief Dave Guzzi told CRN in January. In an interview with CRN last fall, Ernst said the company had a "really wide bench of incredible people" to fill regional channel roles as part of a new engagement model that would promise more consistency for partners. "They need a predictable support model, and that's what this structure gets," he said at the time. Prior to Intel appointing him to lead the company's custom chip design efforts, Iyengar had worked since at least 1997 for Cadence, a major supplier of chip design software that Tan led as CEO from 2009 to 2021, according to his LinkedIn profile. The chipmaker said that Iyengar, who most recently held the title of corporate vice president at Cadence, has "extensive experience and expertise in helping customers create best-in-class custom silicon, including a deep focus on hyperscale data center solutions optimized for key workloads." Intel has been ramping up its efforts to design custom chips over the last several months as hyperscalers like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud increasingly lean on homegrown chip designs to meet their unique needs. Before Gelsinger was reportedly forced to quit by Intel's board last December, the now-former CEO had announced a few months prior a "multi-year, multibillion-dollar framework" where it will design and manufacture custom chips for Amazon Web Services. That vision continues under Tan, who said at the Intel Vision event in late March that he believes the company can "play an important role in developing custom silicon that tailor for specific applications." Allegrucci, Intel's new head of AI SoC engineering, "will be responsible for managing the development of multiple SoCs that will be part of Intel's AI road map," according to the company. He most recently led AI silicon engineering as vice president of engineering at Rain AI, a chip startup backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Prior to joining Rain AI, Allegrucci spent 17 years, including most recently as a senior director, at Apple, "where he oversaw the development of more than 30 [system-on-chips] used across many of the company's flagship products," according to Intel. Desai, Intel's new head of AI fabric and networking, will lead "development of innovative SoC architectures for Intel's AI GPUs and forward-looking road map," according to the company. He had joined Google in 2021 through its acquisition of Provino Technologies, a chip startup he led and founded that was focused on developing an interconnect platform. Prior to starting Provino in 2015, Desai served as a senior engineering manager for five years at Apple and in the same role before that at chip design firm PA Semi, which Apple acquired in 2008 and has served a major role in that company's homegrown chip efforts. Intel officials have previously said the company still intends to develop a rack-scale AI solution based on a next-generation chip called "Jaguar Shores."

Intel announces key leadership appointments to boost engineering focus By Investing.com

Investing.com -- Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) has announced several leadership appointments aimed at strengthening customer relationships and enhancing its engineering capabilities. Greg Ernst, who has over 20 years of experience at Intel, has been appointed as chief revenue officer. Ernst has been leading Intel's Sales and Marketing Group (SMG) since May and will continue to report to CEO Lip-Bu Tan. Three new engineering leaders are also joining the company. Srinivasan Iyengar has been named Senior Vice President and Fellow, and will lead a new customer engineering center of excellence. Iyengar, who previously led global silicon engineering at Cadence Design (NASDAQ:CDNS) Systems, brings expertise in creating custom silicon with a focus on hyperscale data center solutions. Jean-Didier Allegrucci has been appointed Vice President of AI System on Chip (SoC) Engineering. He will manage the development of multiple SoCs for Intel's AI roadmap. Allegrucci comes from Rain AI and previously spent 17 years at Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) where he oversaw the development of more than 30 SoCs. Shailendra Desai joins as Vice President of AI Fabric and Networking. He will lead the development of SoC architectures for Intel's AI GPUs. Desai previously led silicon engineering at Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and was the founder and CEO of Provino Technologies, which Google acquired in 2021. Both Allegrucci and Desai will report to Sachin Katti, Intel's chief technology and AI officer. "We see significant opportunities ahead to strengthen our product offerings and meet the changing needs of our customers," said Tan. "Greg, Srini, J-D and Shailendra are highly accomplished leaders with strong reputations across our ecosystem, and they will each play important roles as we position our business for the future."

Intel Reshapes Leadership Team With New CRO, Engineering Hires

Intel has promoted Greg Ernst to chief revenue officer and created three new engineering leadership roles, moves the chip maker says will strengthen customer relationships and sharpen its focus on engineering. Ernst has been leading Intel's sales and marketing group since last month. Prior, he oversaw sales and marketing across the Americas. Ernst is a customer-focused leader with deep market insight, having held global roles in sales, marketing and product development, Intel said Wednesday. On the engineering side, Srinivasan Iyengar, Jean-Didier Allegrucci and Shailendra Desai are joining Intel in senior leadership positions. Iyengar has been appointed senior vice president and fellow. He will lead a new customer engineering center of excellence and join Intel's executive team, reporting to Chief Executive Lip-Bu Tan. He most recently worked at Cadence Design Systems, where he led global silicon engineering. Intel said he brings broad experience in helping customers build custom silicon, with particular expertise in hyperscale data center solutions. Allegrucci has been named vice president of AI system-on-chip, or SoC, engineering. He will oversee development of several chips in Intel's artificial-intelligence roadmap. He joins from Rain AI, a startup where he led AI silicon efforts, and previously spent 17 years at Apple leading chip development. Desai has been named vice president of AI fabric and networking. He will oversee SoC architectures for Intel's AI GPUs and related technologies. He was most recently at Google, where he led silicon engineering and platform design for mobile SoCs. He previously founded Provino Technologies, an SoC startup Google acquired in 2021. Allegrucci and Desai will report to Sachin Katti, Intel's chief technology and AI officer. "We see significant opportunities ahead to strengthen our product offerings and meet the changing needs of our customers," Tan said. "Greg, Srini, J-D and Shailendra are highly accomplished leaders with strong reputations across our ecosystem, and they will each play important roles as we position our business for the future."