Intel’s New CEO Faced 3 Major Crises—Then Trump Dropped a Fourth Bomb

Intel's leadership just got a whole lot messier.

Fresh CEO. Mounting problems. And now—political curveballs.

Here’s how the chip giant’s roadmap got shredded.

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The Triple Threat: Manufacturing, Innovation, Competition

TSMC’s eating their lunch. AMD’s stealing their blueprints. And their fabs? Stuck in 10nm purgatory. Pat Gelsinger walked into a perfect storm.

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Enter Stage Right: The Trump Factor

Export controls. Tariff threats. A surprise tweetstorm about ‘bringing chips home’—right as Intel’s betting billions on overseas expansion. Timing’s impeccable—if you’re shorting their stock.

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Gelsinger’s playbook just got torched. Again. Watch the supply chain nerds recalculate their Excel models in real-time—those 5% margin dreams aren’t gonna forecast themselves.

'No AI story'

While Tan contends with a newfound adversary in Trump, he’s still on the hook to solve massive issues at Intel that he inherited from his predecessor, Pat Gelsinger.

For one, Intel's legacy business making CPUs, or central processing units, is losing its dominance, forfeiting market share to Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Arm (ARM). Intel's revenue share of the market for CPUs in desktops, for example, fell to around 66% in the first quarter of 2025 from 81% the prior year, according to Mercury Research data obtained by investing firm Bernstein.

At the same time, Intel's attempts to debut AI data center chips to compete with Nvidia have fallen flat. Its Gaudi 3 AI chip was supposed to produce $500 million in revenue in 2024 — a projection far below the billions of dollars in sales seen by Nvidia (NVDA) and AMD that the company laid out last April.The company canceled its latest AI chip called Falcon Shores but has said in earnings calls that it's developing another chip called Jaguar Shores.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Tan had been exploring the acquisition of an AI business. Intel's board took its time deliberating the deal, however, and another company is now poised to buy it instead.

Intel declined to comment on the alleged acquisition attempt.

"They've got no AI story," Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon told Yahoo Finance Friday.

Tan said in a July earnings call that "Intel has traditionally been weak or entirely absent" in the AI space but intends "to incubate and grow" under his leadership. He said he will share more about the company's AI strategy "in the coming months."

At the same time, Intel is struggling to revive its manufacturing business. Intel both designs and produces its own chips. In 2021, under Gelsinger, the company opened up its manufacturing division to outside customers.

But Intel has struggled to secure clients, and its roadmap to introduce new manufacturing technology to produce more advanced semiconductors has been repeatedly pushed back. Its latest 18A tech was initially supposed to roll out in the first half of 2025 and is now slated to debut in 2026. Tan left the fate of 14A — a manufacturing process technology that was set to come after 18A — unclear in the company's latest earnings call, which helped send the stock spiraling.

Still, analysts say Tan is Intel's best hope of succeeding in a turnaround, if it can at all.

Tan has served on boards and in various executive roles at 14 firms in the semiconductor space, most notably including his tenure as CEO of Cadence Design Systems, a chip design software company. Prior to becoming Intel's CEO, he was a member of the company's board but left due to disagreements with Gelsinger, according to a Reuters report last year." Investors cheered Tan's appointment in March, with the stock rising as much as 15% on the news.

"Lip-Bu is a legend in the semi industry, and his ties to many companies, both in and out of China, are well known," Bernstein's Rasgon wrote in a note to investors Thursday following Trump's Truth Social post.

Stifel analyst Ruben Roy told Yahoo Finance in an email Friday, "I believe that LBT [Lip-Bu Tan] is one of probably a very small group of people [in] the world that I think can help put INTC on the right path. That view is unchanged."

Of his company Walden International's investments in China, Roy wrote, "I think he is an absolute visionary and of course he will have made investments in strong tech companies globally through his VC firm."

Laura Bratton is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Bluesky @laurabratton.bsky.social. Email her at [email protected].