Intel CEO Bob Swan is stepping down effective February 15. He will be preceded by VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger, announced the chipmaker company, Intel. Pat will also join the Intel board of directors upon assuming the role.

This announcement had a positive impact on Intel’s stock which rose by seven percent, while VMware’s share fell nearly seven percent.
Intel though had a poor business last year, and it stressed that the announcement is unrelated to Intel’s 2020 financial performance.
What resulted in the poor performance of the company is Apple breaking up its 15-year association with Intel for Macs as the company went for its own MI Silicon chip. The new Macs with this chip are already in the market.

As per IANS news, Omar Ishrak, independent chairman of Intel board, said, “After careful consideration, the board concluded that now is the right time to make this leadership change to draw on Pat’s technology and engineering expertise during this critical period of transformation at Intel”.

Bob was declared Intel’s CEO in January 2019 after he served as interim CEO for seven months.

Pat served as VMware CEO since September 2012. Before taking up this role, he was the president and chief operating officer, EMC Information Infrastructure Products at EMC.

Pat has already spent three decades at Intel before joining EMC, where he became the company’s first CTO and drove the creation of key industry technologies like USB and Wi-Fi. He was the face behind the original architecture of 80486 processor, led 14 different microprocessor programs and served in key roles in the Core and Xeon families.

Pat said, “I am thrilled to rejoin and lead Intel forward at this important time for the company, our industry and our nation. I believe Intel has significant potential to continue to reshape the future of technology and look forward to working with the incredibly talented global Intel team to accelerate innovation and create value for our customers and shareholders”.

Bob said that with the significant progress and development in the market, they are now at the right point of preparing this transition to the next leader of Intel. He said, “I am fully supportive of the board’s selection of Pet and have great confidence that under his leadership and the rest of the management team, Intel will continue to lead the market as one of the world’s most influential technology companies”.