Pat Gelsinger

Pat Gelsinger became Intel's CEO in 2021 with a mandate to save the company that once defined American semiconductor leadership. Intel had lost its manufacturing edge to TSMC, its design lead to AMD, and its relevance to NVIDIA's AI chips. Gelsinger's turnaround plan — 'IDM 2.0' — involved investing $100B+ in new fabrication plants across the United States and Europe to reclaim Intel's manufacturing crown.

Gelsinger was Intel's first CTO, having joined the company at age 18 as a quality control technician and rising to become the youngest VP in company history. He was the architect of the 80486 processor and one of the key designers of USB and Wi-Fi. After leaving Intel in 2009, he became CEO of VMware and grew it from $2.5B to $12B in annual revenue before returning to Intel.

His return to Intel represents one of the most ambitious corporate turnarounds in semiconductor history. The CHIPS Act — $52B in U.S. government subsidies for domestic chip manufacturing — was partly driven by the strategic urgency Gelsinger articulated about American semiconductor independence. Whether Intel's turnaround succeeds under his successor will determine whether America maintains its lead in the most strategically important industry of the 21st century.