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Intel Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger retired on Sunday after a 40-year career at the company that has lately been marred by missteps that have enabled rivals to overshadow the once-dominant chipmaker.
David Zinsner and Michelle Johnston Holthaus have been named co-CEOs as the board searches for a new chief executive, the company said Monday.
Zinsner is executive vice president and chief financial officer at the company. Holthaus is the chief executive of Intel Products, which encompasses the company’s client computing and artificial intelligence groups.
Intel shares jumped 3.9% on Monday.
The 63-year-old executive said leading Intel was the honor of his lifetime.
“Today is, of course, bittersweet as this company has been my life for the bulk of my working career,” Gelsinger said in a statement. “I can look back with pride at all that we have accomplished together. It has been a challenging year for all of us as we have made tough but necessary decisions to position Intel for the current market dynamics.”
Frank Yeary, the board’s independent chair, will serve as interim executive chair as the company seeks a new leader.
“On behalf of the board, I want to thank Pat for his many years of service and dedication to Intel across a long career in technology leadership,” Yeary said in a statement. “Pat spent his formative years at Intel, then returned at a critical time for the company in 2021.”
In his statement, Yeary emphasized that the company knows it still has work left to do to restore investor confidence and deliver on its product group.
The company’s stock has plunged 49.7% so far this year and hit a new 10-year low in September as Intel has struggled to keep up with the competition in a densely-packed artificial intelligence chipmaker race.
In November, Intel reported a massive third-quarter loss of $16.6 billion – a far cry from the net profit of $300 million reported in the year-ago period. Earlier this year, the company announced major cost-cutting efforts, including trimming 15,000 employees off its workforce via layoffs and voluntary agreements.
A new chief executive could boost confidence that the company can pull off a turnaround.
Gelsinger took the helm at Intel in February 2001 after leaving the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company in 2009 to join Dell EMC and later serving as chief executive for VMware, a software and cloud computing company.
Gelsinger first joined Intel in 1979 at just 18 years old, fresh off graduating with his associate’s degree from Lincoln Technical Institute. While working at Intel as a technician, Gelsinger earned his bachelor’s in electrical engineering at Santa Clara University.
He grew to become the company’s first chief technology officer in 2001, after working as a design engineer on new Intel microprocessors, earning eight patents and managing the company’s products division.
