Intel's chairman reportedly tried to sell fabs to TSMC, CEO Lip-Bu Tan opposed

The report actually paints Tan in a pretty favorable light if you're in both the "hope Intel turns it around instead of selling out for shareholder value" and "Intel should keep its own manufacturing" camps.

Tan's effort to raise several billion dollars through Wall Street banks to strengthen Intel's finances and invest in production capacity were pushed back by the board. A potential purchase of an AI accelerator developer — aimed at narrowing the gap with Nvidia and AMD — has also been slowed by lengthy board debate, allowing another tech company to move toward acquiring the target instead, the report claims without elaborating.

There was a post I read about a year ago (SubStack link) -- I think I found it through Ian Cutress? -- which discussed the author's thoughts on the board at the time. He wasn't thrilled with the composition:

The board is pretty horrific. Most of the people have no technical expertise, and many of the people most at fault for getting Intel to where it is, are still on the board.

The current rift just makes me even more curious about how much direction has changed and is changing under Tan vs Gelsinger. Until now it was a bit of a question mark how pro-fabs Tan was, but now it looks like he's pretty firmly in the pro-fabs camp - and maybe just less optimistic (or more pragmatic?) about the situation compared to Gelsinger.

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The report actually paints Tan in a pretty favorable light if you're in both the "hope Intel turns it around instead of selling out for shareholder value" and "Intel should keep its own manufacturing" camps.
Tan's effort to raise several billion dollars through Wall Street banks to strengthen Intel's finances and invest in production capacity were pushed back by the board. A potential purchase of an AI accelerator developer — aimed at narrowing the gap with Nvidia and AMD — has also been slowed by lengthy board debate, allowing another tech company to move toward acquiring the target instead, the report claims without elaborating.
There was a post I read about a year ago (SubStack link) -- I think I found it through Ian Cutress? -- which discussed the author's thoughts on the board at the time. He wasn't thrilled with the composition:
The board is pretty horrific. Most of the people have no technical expertise, and many of the people most at fault for getting Intel to where it is, are still on the board.
The current rift just makes me even more curious about how much direction has changed and is changing under Tan vs Gelsinger. Until now it was a bit of a question mark how pro-fabs Tan was, but now it looks like he's pretty firmly in the pro-fabs camp - and maybe just less optimistic (or more pragmatic?) about the situation compared to Gelsinger.
- The big revelation for me from the recent rounds of news was that Tan does actually seem pretty pro-fab. Perhaps his earlier statements were more of an attempt to enhance discipline/productivity.
  An investment banker probably has excellent understanding of finances and great connection, but I doubt such an individual has anything beyond a superficial understanding of the technical processes involved.