Intel announced Monday that CEO Lip-Bu Tan will take direct charge of the company’s artificial intelligence initiatives following the departure of its chief technology officer, who has joined OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.
In a post on X, Intel’s former CTO Sachin Katti revealed that he has joined OpenAI, marking a major leadership shift at the semiconductor giant. Katti, who had been steering Intel’s artificial intelligence strategy since a company-wide management shakeup in January, played a key role in aligning the firm’s chip development with emerging AI demands.
“We thank Sachin for his contributions and wish him all the best. Lip-Bu will lead the AI and Advanced Technologies Groups, working closely with the team,” Intel said in a statement. “AI remains one of Intel’s highest strategic priorities, and we are focused on executing our technology and product roadmap across emerging AI workloads,” the company added.
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OpenAI President Greg Brockman wrote on X that Katti would be “designing and building our compute infrastructure, which will power our (artificial general intelligence) research and scale its applications to benefit everyone.”
Since taking charge as Intel’s CEO in March, Lip-Bu Tan has faced the challenge of steadying a company in transition. Several senior executives have left during his short tenure, underscoring the depth of change underway as Intel works to regain its footing in a fiercely competitive chip industry.
Tan, a veteran with long experience in semiconductors and venture investing, was brought in to revive a brand that once set the pace for global chipmaking but has since fallen behind rivals such as TSMC and Nvidia. His turnaround plan hinges on rebuilding Intel’s credibility as both a technology leader and a reliable manufacturing partner.
One of his biggest hurdles remains the company’s foundry business, created to produce chips for outside clients. Despite major investments and public backing from U.S. policymakers, Intel has yet to land a high-profile customer that could signal confidence in its manufacturing capabilities.
People close to the company say Tan is pushing to streamline decision-making and attract new partners, but results will take time. The leadership shake-ups reflect a company trying to reinvent itself, balancing the need for fresh direction with the pressure to deliver results in a fast-moving era dominated by AI and advanced chip design.
Intel’s traditional strength in central processing units (CPUs) has kept it relevant in AI infrastructure, where its chips still power many server systems. However, these processors play a supporting role compared to the high-performance AI accelerators that dominate the market. The company has yet to deliver a data centre AI chip capable of competing with the powerful silicon designed by Nvidia and produced by TSMC in Taiwan.
Despite ongoing development efforts, Intel’s AI chips have struggled to match the efficiency and scalability of Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs), which have become the industry standard for training and running large-scale AI models.
Sachin Katti spent about four years at Intel, where he began in the company’s networking division and eventually took charge of it under former CEO Pat Gelsinger. When Lip-Bu Tan restructured Intel’s management earlier this year to create a leaner leadership model, Katti was elevated to the dual roles of chief technology officer and chief AI officer, a move seen as part of Tan’s push to centralize decision-making around innovation.
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Under Lip-Bu Tan’s leadership, Intel has undergone a sweeping internal reshuffle aimed at tightening operations and energizing its turnaround plan. Several long-time executives have seen their responsibilities broaden, while fresh faces from outside the company have been brought in to strengthen key divisions.
Naga Chandrasekaran, who previously headed Intel’s manufacturing arm, has taken on a larger mandate that now includes managing relationships with external foundry clients. At the same time, Tan has been reaching beyond Intel’s ranks to infuse new expertise into the organization. Among his most notable hires is Kevork Kechichian, a former executive at Arm, who now leads Intel’s data centre group, a crucial unit as the company races to build hardware capable of handling the surging demand for artificial intelligence workloads.