Intel’s fired CEO Pat Gelsinger recently blamed long-term structural issues for the chipmaker’s failure in the AI race. Speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box recently, Pat Gelsinger remarked: “Intel made a set of bad decisions over 15 years,” adding “[We] lost technical leadership, wasn’t led by technologists for many years and we were late on AI as well.” While he praised Intel’s 18A process milestone, Gelsinger admitted that Intel’s rival Nvidia has captured nearly all the incremental AI data center revenue. “We need leading R&D. We need leading manufacture at scale in the US for our supply chains,” Gelsinger said during the interaction.

Former Intel CEO defends government’s stake

Former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger also defended the US government’s equity stake in the company saying the deal’s success will be dependent on whether the investment leads to expanded domestic chip manufacturing or not.“To me, the only metric that matters is: does it cause the building and filling of Intel fabs?” Gelsinger said. “If it causes more fabs to be built, more fabs to be filled in the U.S., then it’s good. If that doesn’t occur, then it’s not right.”He also acknowledged that the market reacted positively to the government’s investment. He further stressed that “none of those [other investments] have yet included a commitment to fill the Intel fabs.”He also expressed his frustration with the CHIPS Act – short for Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors — is a government law aimed at boosting domestic semiconductor manufacturing, research, and development. It was signed into law by President Joe Biden in August 2022. “I was super disappointed that Gina and the Department of Commerce took so long to get the money deployed … two and a half years, critical years, nothing happened. So I was quite disappointed. And for them to come in and say that was broken, we’re going to fix it in a very different way,” Pat Gelsinger said.