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Lip-Bu Tan, who is set to take over as Intel’s chief executive next week, is a veteran of the semiconductor industry who has an even longer track record as a technology investor, particularly in Chinese companies.
A former Intel board member, Tan will lead a once-venerated U.S. company that has seen its fortunes fall as the artificial-intelligence boom prompted a shift in industry demand away from its central processing chips.
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Here are five things to know about Tan and Intel.
Semiconductor titan
Tan, 65, has risen to become a titan in the semiconductor business, receiving a top honor in 2022 from the Washington-based Semiconductor Industry Association.
Tan gained fame during his tenure leading Cadence Design Systems—which provides software and services to develop chips and other core technologies—from 2009 to 2021. He helped to turn around the company, focusing on what Intel said was customer-centric innovation that helped double revenue and expand margins.
“Cadence was in pretty big trouble” in 2009, Morris Chang, the chairman of chip titan Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., said in a tribute to Tan in 2016. “Lip-Bu led Cadence out of the trouble.”
Walden founder
Before Cadence, Tan was widely known as a venture capitalist.
Tan, who has a master’s degree in nuclear engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an M.B.A. from the University of San Francisco, founded Walden International in 1987 and focused on startups in Asia. The company’s name stemmed from Tan’s fascination with the “contrarian thinking” of American essayist Henry David Thoreau, who wrote about Walden Pond in Massachusetts, according to a 2004 article in Businessweek.
Walden was an early investor in Semiconductor Manufacturing International, eventually investing more than $50 million in the Chinese chip giant. Tan served on the board of that company and China’s Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment, and he has been a fixture at Silicon Valley events hosted by the professional group Chinese-American Semiconductor Professional Association.
He served two years on the board of SoftBank Group, whose Vision Fund has been a mammoth investor in Silicon Valley in recent years.