Intel’s chief executive officer, Pat Gelsinger, stepped down after nearly four years leading the semiconductor company, Intel announced Monday, a surprise leadership change as the chipmaker has struggled in recent months.
Mr. Gelsinger, who took the helm in 2021, also resigned from the company’s board of directors. He will be replaced in the interim by two Intel executives, David Zinsner and Michelle Johnston Holthaus. The company said it would continue its search for permanent replacements.
The leadership change signals Intel’s growing urgency to turn around its business, which has been left in the dust during the lucrative artificial intelligence boom that has turned its rival chipmaker, Nvidia, into one of the world’s most valuable companies. Intel recently cut 15,000 jobs, and its revenue declined more than 30 percent from 2021 through 2023.
Shares of Intel rose about 5 percent in premarket trading, before paring back some of those gains, after the company announced Mr. Gelsinger’s retirement. A loss in market share and struggles in the A.I. market have contributed to a 52 percent slump in the company’s stock price so far this year.
“We have much more work to do at the company and are committed to restoring investor confidence,” Frank Yeary, who will serve as the company’s interim executive chair on the board, said in a statement.
Mr. Gelsinger said in the statement that the move was bittersweet. “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,” he added.
Mr. Gelsinger first joined Intel in 1979, eventually ascending to become the company’s chief technology officer during his initial 30-year stint at the chipmaker. He led the cloud computing company VMware before rejoining Intel as chief executive in early 2021.
For decades, Intel was the industry’s leading chip company. Its semiconductors were the digital engines in more than 80 percent of personal computers, and it later adapted that technology for larger computers in data centers.
But in recent years, Intel lost its one-time dominance. It was too wedded to its highly lucrative PC-era technology, analysts say, as others — most notably, Nvidia — pioneered new designs. In manufacturing, Intel steadily lost its lead to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
As chief executive, Mr. Gelsinger focused on restoring the company’s onetime lead in chip manufacturing technology, but longtime company watchers said Intel badly needed more popular products — such as A.I. chips — to bolster declining revenue.
The company had faced a number of recent setbacks, including the Biden administration last week saying it would reduce the total amount of money granted to Intel under the CHIPS Act. Intel had extended timelines for some projects beyond a government deadline of 2030.
In October, the company posted a $16.6 billion quarterly loss — its biggest in its 56-year history.
Some analysts and industry experts had also questioned Mr. Gelsinger’s strategy of becoming a chip-making foundry for other companies, but keeping that business as a unit of Intel rather than spinning it off entirely. Former Intel board members, including Reed Hundt and David Yoffie, urged for the company to be split into two parts — one for manufacturing chips, the other for designing them.
Mr. Gelsinger had already announced plans to make Intel’s chip-making business an independent subsidiary, arguing that the time was not right for a complete spinoff. His departure suggests that the issue of how to structure Intel’s business could be reconsidered.
Intel said on Monday that the leadership structure of the company’s chip-making foundry business would remain unchanged.
Industry analysts said they were more surprised by the timing of the announcement than that Mr. Gelsinger departed.
The main question, analysts said, is what comes next.
“There don’t seem to be any easy answers here, so whoever winds up filling the slot looks in for a tough ride,” Stacy Rasgon, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, wrote in a note on Monday.
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