Torrid times indeed at the U.S.'s flagship chipmaker as Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has parted ways with the company after almost four years at the helm. Gelsinger's departure, announced in a brief press release yesterday, has shocked the industry. Gelsinger has retired, effective Dec. 1, and will no longer hold a board position at Intel.

Intel's retrospective press release and its wording suggests there has been a major disagreement between Gelsinger and the board. This release is more interesting for what it does not say. It does not mention any reason for Gelsinger's departure; health or personal reasons would surely have been stated if that had been the case. A reason unrelated to Intel's performance would have produced interim CEO quotes talking about their belief in Gelsinger's strategy and their intention to continue its execution. Instead, there was nothing about believing in his plan, nothing about continuity or stability, and few clues as to what will happen next.

What it did say is that Gelsinger considers his untimely departure "bittersweet," and that Intel will begin a search for a new CEO immediately.

So, either the board ran out of patience with Gelsinger's IDM 2.0 vision, or investors did. On the face of it, Intel stock has dropped 60% since Gelsinger took over in 2021, losing 50% in 2024 alone. The company just had a disastrous quarter (net loss of $16.6 billion on $13.3 billion revenue). But these figures on their own do not tell the full story -- those revenues are better than expected and the losses were down to several planned restructuring changes. Overall, the multi-year changes Gelsinger set in action on both sides of the business will take years to play out.

Interim executive chair of Intel's board, Frank Yeary, said in his statement: "As a board, we know first and foremost that we must put our product group at the center of all we do."

Most industry watchers are wondering what this means for a mooted split between Intel Foundry and Intel's product business. The board created a new position, CEO of Intel Products, adding to the suggestion that the product side needs separate leadership, further distancing it from the foundry side. Some commentators have suggested the board's desire to keep a potential split on the table might have been what pushed Gelsinger to resign; that would certainly have been the exact opposite of his vision.

It is true that Intel has had a few mis-steps on the product front, but chips coming to market now are largely based on projects that began before Gelsinger's tenure. The company's bungled AI/GPU strategy has to be a big part of it; this is where competitors Nvidia and AMD are seeing major growth and Intel is floundering. But again, this is the strategy of previous CEOs, which is still playing out. Gelsinger is still largely cleaning up someone else's mess.

Yeary's quote also speaks about creating a "leaner, simpler, more agile Intel," which surely gives us a clue about what the board must be thinking...slash and burn.

Which bring us to Intel's search for a new CEO. The board has appointed former CFO David Zinsner and former client computing group general manager Michelle Johnston Holthaus (who now also serves as Intel Products CEO) as interim co-CEOs. But who can fill Gelsinger's shoes?

The outgoing CEO had previously had a 30-year career with Intel, culminating in being appointed the company's first CTO, so his name was already part of Intel lore. When he returned to Intel as CEO in 2021, his appointment was lauded by the industry as the perfect choice -- as a technical, engineering CEO with unmatched Intel pedigree, with the bold vision to potentially restore Intel to greatness. Gelsinger's aura -- which combines a genuine excitement for new technologies with an almost grandfatherly stability -- was enhanced by his credentials outside of Intel as CEO of VMWare, where he had been a big hit.

Intel employees must surely be dreading the inevitable replacement with some ruthless, finance-oriented, Wall-Street-pleasing MBA, obsessed with great numbers and not great products. This would be an extremely short-sighted appointment, but on the other hand, who could possibly replace Gelsinger?

While the new CEO will claim the wins set in play by Gelsinger's plans (including the launch of 18A, the process node planned to put Intel Foundry back on the map, coming in 2025, and industry-standard PDKs for Intel's 14-, 10- and 7-nm processes, finally allowing external customers to use Intel's fabs, coming in 2027), this still is not a role suitable for a first-time CEO.

Best for Intel would be a seasoned engineering CEO with both product and foundry experience, with a deep love for, and understanding of, the U.S.'s flagship chipmaker, with a clear vision for Intel's future while keeping an eye on its history. The question is, does this person exist, outside of Pat Gelsinger? It looks doubtful.