Former Intel CEO on What Went Wrong, What's Next + Lovable CEO on the Real Promise of Vibe Coding

**Jason** (0:00)
Spent a long time at Intel.

**Pat Gelsinger** (0:02)
Yeah, only 34 years.

**Jason** (0:04)
34 years.
Probably one of the greatest American companies ever, and then absolutely went off the rails and got absolutely demolished by Nvidia, TSMC, and I guess Apple to a certain extent. So you had this incredible Intel inside moment. We bought our computers based on, hey, the Pentium and that sound.

**Pat Gelsinger** (0:33)
Intel inside, baby.

**Jason** (0:34)
Intel inside.

**Pat Gelsinger** (0:35)
Dum dum dum.

**Jason** (0:36)
Dum dum dum. So let's talk about how things went wrong, what went right, and then how did it, and you were there for a long time, you took a break, and then you came back. But there seem to have been some critical mistakes that we can learn from, so let's just embrace it and go right into it. Tremendous successes in American company, coming back now, I think, reasonably. But when we look back on it and we do our post-mortem, what were the mistakes and what would we change in terms of the direction of that company?
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**Pat Gelsinger** (1:41)
Having spent so much of my life there, you know, I view it, I joined when I was 18 I went through puberty at Intel, right? I joke, right? You know, just like, you know, I am so early.
Grove, Noyce, Barrett, right? And, you know, they were the people I grew up at, right? You know, so on. They were my mentors. They were the people I adored for. And they were deeply technical.

**Jason** (2:07)
Andy Grove.

**Pat Gelsinger** (2:08)
Andy Grove, Gordon Moore, Bob Noyce, you know, co-inventor. You know, these were deeply technical leaders. I remember when I joined the executive staff for the first time.
There was probably 15 of the 20 people that were in the room were PhDs, right? You know, it was just that technical. And, you know, I view one of the things that went off the rail was when it started to be run by business people.

**Jason** (2:31)
Yeah.

**Pat Gelsinger** (2:32)
As opposed to technical people.

**Jason** (2:33)
The bean counters, the finance people.

**Pat Gelsinger** (2:34)
Yeah. And, you know, when I became CEO in 2001, that was the first technical leader in essentially 15 years, right? You know, associated with it. You know, and if you have a business leader, who does he promote? Business leaders. And, you know, right? You know, so I think one of the fundamental things is, and, you know, as you look at the great technology companies today, you know, they're deeply technical.

**Jason** (2:59)
And founder led typically.

**Pat Gelsinger** (3:01)
You know, and even if they're not, you know, Sacha is not a founder, right? Sundar is not a founder as well, but they're deeply technical individuals. And when you're making these hardcore technical decisions that affect billions of dollars, you don't do that through a spreadsheet. That's a lousy investment, right? Unless the technology trends make it the right to investment. And I think that's one of the fundamental things. And obviously, you know, in the five years, five, six years before I came back, you know, Intel gave $100 billion to shareholders.

**Jason** (3:36)
Oh, the dividends and stock buybacks.

**Pat Gelsinger** (3:40)
What I wouldn't have done for another $100 billion on the balance sheet.

**Jason** (3:46)
Well, I mean, what would you have done? You probably would have made chips for iPhone, which Intel passed on, yeah?

**Pat Gelsinger** (3:53)
Yeah.
But, you know, it hadn't built a new factory in a decade when I got there. It's like, you know, how can you not be building? How could you not buy EUV machines? You know, there's just all of these things, you know, that you would only do as a technologist because the economics behind them by themselves were not good. So, you know, it's getting back to the core of technology. To me, that was, you know, the fundamental thing. You know, you make good decisions, you make bad decisions as leaders. Every business does that as they go along. But, you know, fundamentally, this is a technology business. And you need technologists running technology that then hires technologists that are sitting at the staff, but then hire the best technologists, you know.