Intel (INTC) CEO Lip-Bu Tan came aboard the troubled chipmaker in March with multiple harrowing tasks: deciding the fate of the company’s cash-bleeding manufacturing division, stemming losses in its legacy computer chip business, and catching up in the AI race.
Now he has another, arguably more daunting problem: President Trump.
Trump called for Tan’s resignation in a post early Thursday on his social media platform, Truth Social, writing, “The CEO of INTEL is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately.”
The post came minutes after Fox Business covered recent criticism of the CEO from Republican Sen. Tom Cotton over his ties with China. In April, a Reuters report detailed Tan’s wide-ranging investments in Chinese companies made through his VC firm, Walden International. The outlet found that the firm “remains invested in 20 funds and companies alongside Chinese government funds or state-owned enterprises, according to Chinese corporate databases.”
Cotton wrote a letter to Intel chairman Frank Yeary on Wednesday, saying he felt “concern about the security and integrity of Intel’s operations and its potential impact on U.S. national security,” given those ties.
Tan responded in a memo to employees posted on Intel’s website late Thursday, saying there was “a lot of misinformation circulating about my past roles.” He went on to express his love for the United States, where he’s lived for more than 40 years.
“We are engaging with the Administration to address the matters that have been raised and ensure they have the facts,” he wrote. “I fully share the President’s commitment to advancing U.S. national and economic security, I appreciate his leadership to advance these priorities, and I’m proud to lead a company that is so central to these goals.”
Intel is the only remaining large-scale US-based advanced chip manufacturer and has contracts with the Department of Defense. Most of the world’s advanced chips are made by Taiwanese contract chip manufacturer TSMC (TSMC.BA), which is expanding its US footprint with a $165 billion investment to build factories in Arizona.
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. Intel never said whether it met the target. 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.
Intel’s CEO Lip-Bu Tan speaks at the company’s Annual Manufacturing Technology Conference in San Jose, Calif., on April 29. (Reuters/Laure Andrillon/File Photo) ·REUTERS / Reuters
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, which Intel declined to comment on. 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.”
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Laura Bratton is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Bluesky @laurabratton.bsky.social. Email her at laura.bratton@yahooinc.com.
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