Intel revealed: 250 vice presidents left or were fired this year
David Zinsner, Intel's CFO, revealed that as part of the organizational change led by Lip-Bu Tan, the company has reduced its management layers from 12 to 6 and the number of vice presidents from approximately 450 to 200.
Since Lip-Bu Tan took office as Intel's CEO, the American chip company has accelerated the layoff and cost-cutting measures started by his predecessor, Pat Gelsinger, focusing on management layers and streamlining organizational bureaucracy. Now, the company's long-time CFO, David Zinsner, reveals that Intel has reduced the number of management layers from twelve to just six, and the number of vice presidents from 450 to about 200.
Zinsner, speaking at the Deutsche Bank Technology Conference, explained that this was intended to reduce bureaucracy, accelerate decision-making processes, and shorten the path from development to product launch. According to him, the change is reflected in the fact that more products reach the required level of readiness in the first silicon version, compared to the four or five development cycles that were sometimes required in the past.
Cultural change: "Without veto power that delays decision-making"
In his first months on the job, Tan dedicated much time to changing the organizational culture. "When you look back at Intel's challenges over the last decade, a significant portion of them boils down to culture," Zinsner explained. "Tan understood this even when he was a director, and when he was appointed CEO, he knew this was the first thing he had to fix." According to Zinsner, the change was carried out by injecting new blood into management: "He brought in people who think more aggressively, with a 'take no prisoners' approach, but who know how to operate in a lean environment and succeed on the first try."
Tan's second step was a war on bureaucracy, which manifested in cutting half of the management layers in the company (from 12 to 6). This move was intended to eliminate management ranks that slowed down decision-making and held broad "veto power," which caused delays. Zinsner noted that the change is already bearing fruit and that products now reach readiness in their first version — similar to the nature of startup companies' operations.
According to Zinsner, the CEO's third and most significant move was emphasizing organizational transparency. "In the past, Intel failed in transparency; presentations were changed on the way up and presented the CEO with a picture completely different from the reality on the ground, out of a 'I won't admit failure' approach," Zinsner said. "This led to wrong decisions. Fixing this issue is causing a huge change: the culture change has stabilized the production and launch processes, and now the company is on the right track."
AI revolution: surge in demand for core processors
Zinsner updated conference attendees that Intel is benefiting from the AI industry's transition from training models to the inference and AI agent operation stage. This phenomenon changes hardware requirements and dictates a more significant integration of central processing units (CPUs) in servers. "Activity based on AI agents may require 4 to 6 times more CPU resources compared to a typical server farm used for training models," he explained. According to him, the change is already reflected in double-digit growth in the number of server processors and an increase in the number of cores. He estimated that in the coming years, market competition will not be decided only by processor performance, but also by the manufacturers' ability to supply them in the required quantities.
Zinsner identified several additional growth engines for Intel in the coming years: penetration into the home and industrial robotics market; expansion of the company's advanced chip packaging technology, which competes with TSMC and is expected to significantly increase its activity starting from the second half of 2027; and the development of advanced chip manufacturing technology smaller than 2 nanometers (1.8 angstroms).
In this area too, Zinsner identifies positive trends: "We haven't seen performance like this since the 22-nanometer process, which was probably one of the best manufacturing processes Intel ever launched," he noted. The company's next milestone (the 14A process) is expected in October 2026, with Intel planning to start initial risk production during 2027 and reach large-scale production in 2028.
