Bill Gates, the American businessman and philanthropist who currently sits on Forbes’ real-time billionaires list with a net worth of $106.9 billion thanks in part to his co-founding of Microsoft in 1975 and the development of the Windows operating system, is unhappy with the current state of Intel, according to new statements that the 69-year-old shared during a recent interview with the AP about his new memoir, Source Code: My Beginnings.
“I am stunned that Intel basically lost its way. [Intel co-founder] Gordon Moore always kept Intel at the state of the art. And now they are kind of behind in terms of chip design and they are kind of behind in chip fabrication,” Gates told the AP’s Michael Liedtke at one point during their discussion, which covered topics that ranged from vaccine conspiracy views to Google’s antitrust challenges.
“Both of those are very capital intensive,” Gates noted. “They missed the AI chip revolution, and with their fabrication capabilities, they don’t even use standards that people like Nvidia and Qualcomm find easy. I thought Pat Gelsinger was very brave to say, ‘No, I am going to fix the design side, I am going to fix the fab side.’ I was hoping for his sake, for the country’s sake that he would be successful. I hope Intel recovers, but it looks pretty tough for them at this stage.”
Gates’ comments come around a month after Intel reported its fourth-quarter and full-year 2024 financial results, revealing that its Q4 revenue was $14.3 billion, down 7% YoY, while full-year revenue was $53.1 billion, down 2% YoY.
“The fourth quarter was a positive step forward as we delivered revenue, gross margin and EPS above our guidance,” said Michelle Johnston Holthaus, interim co-CEO of Intel and CEO of Intel Products. “Our renewed focus on strengthening and simplifying our product portfolio, combined with continued progress on our process roadmap, is positioning us to better serve the needs of our customers. Dave and I are taking actions to enhance our competitive position and create shareholder value.”
“The cost reduction plan we announced last year to improve the trajectory of the company is having an impact,” said David Zinsner, interim co-CEO and chief financial officer of Intel. “We are fostering a culture of efficiency across the business while driving toward greater returns on our invested capital and improved profitability. Our Q1 outlook reflects seasonal weakness magnified by macro uncertainties, further inventory digestion and competitive dynamics. We will remain highly focused on execution to build on our progress and unlock value.”
Discussion (16 replies)
Join Discussion →Would love to see Gates get a controlling seat on the board to give Intel some solid direction.
I agree. It saddens me to no end to see Intel like this. I've very much enjoyed my recent rides with AMD but I spent decades using Intel and currently don't see anything on the horizon that will bring me back.
Edit: I will say that I like the CPU in my laptop but there was no other choice at the pricepoint I got for it. Twice now when I've went to get a gaming laptop they've managed to corner the market for premier GPU bundling. I recently mentioned this continued trend happening with RTX 5080/5090 mobile GPUs and mobile Core Ultra 285K processors. They seem to have their act together on the mobile front but basically abandoned desktop gaming. That may seem overly dramatic but it's what I perceive.
The new AI chips from AMD are gaining some traction at least in hearts and minds if not store shelves/online portals.
"And now they are kind of behind in terms of chip design and they are kind of behind in chip fabrication."
Coming from a guy who thought Netscape and mobile/cell's were nothingburgers. I give him a lot of credit, but any company/CEO can miss the boat.
I almost feel bad for Intel. Almost.
I am sad that if Intel doesn't get it's act together, x86 is pretty well dead. I mean, AMD is there, and kudos to them. But I think if x86 becomes a one-horse race, ARM will walk all over it -- and that, I think, will be the death of DIY computer building. ARM may yet walk all over it anyway - all the signs are kind of pointed that direction, but the only thing that has held it off as long as it has, has been the innovation driven by the rivalry between AMD and Intel, and the ability for ~both~ of those companies to remain viable and successful throughout (for various definitions of viable and successful, I admit).
But I don't feel sorry for Intel at all - I remember all the anti-competitive practices and shenanigans they pulled in the 90's and 00's. This is just like karma.
Intel , likely destroyed itself with forced ranking, or equivalent.
Nah, Intel killed themselves being greedy. Hiding new features behind high end datacenter products (IE: more PCIe lanes, more cores) and not innovating anything on the desktop side other than just mere IPC increases year after year. If it wasn't for AMD we would probably still be buying quad core Intel CPUs for "mainstream" gaming setups and the 8 core would be super expensive on the higher end desktop/workstation models.
Intel gets what they deserve. Good riddance.
True but you'll note that AMD has also only been giving IPC increases since intel is no longer competitive with them. Mainstream gaming has been 8 cores since 2017 at AMD's side too.
True they are greedy, but have they been capable of innovating? No they have not. True all you said if they didnt have competition, but all their greedyness would matter a lot less if they were blasting away AMD year after year. Nvidia is plenty greedy and they are manuvering the whole market towards their exclusive tech, slowly but surely.
Nvidia is plenty expensive, and yet.
Intel killed themselves with forced ranking, they might not even know it. Forced ranking and the like have insidous, yet hard to define consequences. It screws a lot with human behaviors and tendencies, its slow, termite style kind of thing.
If they are still doing forced ranking, I dont think they will survive at all. Btw, yes ARM will blow away x86 in time, how much, who knows, but the software side seems quite agile to move between the two.
Right, AMD came out with 8 core processors for their first two Zen generations. Then they started with the 16 core processors. All the while Intel had 4, 6
If it wasn't for that. Intel would probably still be rocking quad core CPUs with IPC increases.
In 2018, Intel came out with 6 core processors. Watch out now. 6 whole cores.
Rumor has it that Zen6 will have 12 core chiplets which will mean 24 core Ryzen processors with 48 threads.
Skylake already had up to 18 cores in 2017, that were in the enthusiast line, not datacenter / enterprise products.
Articles online from 'leakers' are claiming intel will have 52 core processors. P cores, E cores, and Super E cores. (or whatever they call them)
Could be exciting.
Here's hoping. Its a long, long time coming and maybe I'm imagining it but it seems like we're finally seeing more games utilize more than 8c/16t, even at 4K. Still just a small amount of them and even then barely moving the meter but that has to start somewhere. I purposely held off, for now, on an AM5 build because of this. Meanwhile some Panther Lake stuff is looking pretty cool.
IDK, I'd prefer less but faster cores, beyond a few very specific computation tasks what can even efficiently leverage so many threads?
I am talking about the main stream desktop processors. Not the HEDT stuff where the CPUs cost $2k. Because AMD had those, too. In 2018 AMD had 32 core HEDT processors.
Main gaming systems and main desktops had 16 cores for AMD. Intel up to 6 cores.
The fact they had 18 cores in some processors just proves Intel was just holding them back because they could, not because they didn't have the ability to give them more cores.