The Long View: Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Intel

**Lip-Bu Tan** (0:06)
All your success, this is an iconic company. This is so important for industry and for country. Before you retire, save Intel. That touched my heart.

**Eric Veiel** (0:21)
Welcome back to The Angle from T. Rowe Price, a podcast for curious investors. Just a reminder that outside of the US, this podcast is for investment professionals only. For this episode of The Long View, I sat down with Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Intel, and Menlo Park, California. We discussed his journey to Intel, the future of AI infrastructure, and what it will take for one of technology's most iconic companies to compete in the next era of compute. Well, Lip-Bu, thank you so much for joining us on The Angle. We really appreciate you taking the time to be with us.
Intel is interesting. It's one of the few companies whose turnaround matters, not only to shareholders, but to the structure of the entire global semiconductor supply chain, and frankly, to US national sovereignty. Before we get into that, though, I'd love to start with you. I always like to get to know my guest a little bit personally, and you've got a really interesting story. Born in Malaysia, youngest of five, your father was in the journalism business, your mother worked at the university.
As a kid, I'm curious, what did you love to do? What did you spend your time on when you were a little kid?

**Lip-Bu Tan** (1:27)
So first of all, thank you so much for inviting me for this podcast. And I think a little bit of my background. Born in Malaysia, Moa, Johor, just north of Singapore.
And I followed my mom to Singapore for my education and high school, college, before I came to US for graduate school. And when I was young, my brother and sister, they all, my mom is very strict with them. So they had to play piano lessons and all the way up to performance and composer. And my brother is an orchestra playing violin. And then I supposed to do the same thing in the piano.
And I was just too lazy. And then I love catching spider and I play basketball, volleyball as a team. And so I kind of having fun. And my mom, you know, being the youngest, he let me do whatever I want. So turned out to be a lot of freedom to do that.

**Eric Veiel** (2:35)
That's great.

**Lip-Bu Tan** (2:36)
And then my mom also, for some reason, is that, well, all your brother and sister, they sent to English school.
The last one is that, well, I sent you to Chinese school. So learn the confusion theory and everything. And so, you know, I always apologize to me that, sorry that your English is not good. It's a second language. So in some way, I survived.

**Eric Veiel** (3:00)
Well, you definitely did more than survive. That's a really great story. I was also the youngest. The youngest always get away with a little more. It's a good place to be in the birth order.

**Lip-Bu Tan** (3:09)
I love basketball. I love volleyball. And then, you know, the vocal lesson and piano, it's kind of boring for me.
And until now, I appreciate that. That's why I was on board of San Francisco Opera. And I love music. And then you can't do it yourself. And you just be supportive.

**Eric Veiel** (3:27)
Just be a supporter.
So then you went on to major in physics. What did something in particular draw you to physics? Or just that was you're good in that area and you liked it?

**Lip-Bu Tan** (3:39)
Yeah, in some ways, follow my brother and sister.
And, you know, in some way, my brother is a Rhodes Scholar. And I went to Cambridge and Oxford.
And then I tried to, my teacher always said that, well, you're doing great, but you're less than your brother.
And so, you know that feeling. And so I want to do something different from my brother. And he become the cardiologist to artificial heart. And he do physics. So initially I doing physics just like him in Nanyang Technology University. And I say, physics thought they pretty good. I'm good with mathematics. Physics is all the physical. And then it's good training. And I did it in three years. And then, but they said, well, you're not, your brother is better. So I decided to change in order to come to US and then do a nuclear engineering.

**Eric Veiel** (4:36)
Right. So you were the slacker. So you had to go to MIT to get your master's in nuclear engineering. Okay. I understand.

**Lip-Bu Tan** (4:41)
Because I applied to Berkeley and Stanford. They reject me.