Lip-Bu Tan, chief executive officer of Intel Corp., departs following a meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, Aug. 11, 2025.
Alex Wroblewski | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said Tuesday that the chipmaker has appointed a new chief architect to build out graphics processing units, or GPUs.
The chips, made by the likes of Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, power large language models and have skyrocketed in demand as companies race to build out artificial intelligence infrastructure and data centers.
Tan told the audience at the Cisco AI Summit that it took “some persuasion” to convince the new executive to join the chipmaker. Tan did not name the new hire.
Intel’s stock has rallied over the last year as investors gain optimism about the company’s foundry business, but the company is primarily making chips for itself.
Over the past few years, the embattled American chipmaker has fallen behind major semiconductor players that have seen a boost from the AI data center buildout.
Earlier this month, production snags and supply troubles overshadowed the chipmaker’s better-than-expected quarterly results. Investors had also been hoping for more clarity on an anchor customer for its foundry segment.
Last year, the company received a wave of big investments from the U.S. government, SoftBank and Nvidia.
Tan also discussed the memory chip shortage rattling the technology sector.
Rising AI data center demand has created a supply and demand imbalance that’s allowed memory chip companies to continue hiking prices.
He called AI the “biggest challenge” for memory and said he expects “no relief until 2028.”
