Intel Snags Altman To Close Foundry Day Event
OpenAI's Sam Altman's Q&A with Gelsinger lasted a little over two minutes.
Earlier this week, Intel hosted a day long event, dubbed “IFS Direct Connect”, to showcase their foundry ambitions and progress to date. It was an invitation only event for selected members of the media. Guest speakers (by video link) included the US Commerce Secretary, Gina Raimondo and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Other guests included Rene Haas, Arm CEO, Yuan Xing Lee, Broadcom VP, Eric Fisher, MediaTek VP and Jason Wang, UMC CEO (or is it President?) etc.
As had been previously announced by Gelsinger, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman joined for a Q&A session to close out the event.
Closing out the day will be Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and a leading figure in the AI boom. Altman is a prominent leader and thinker on AI’s impact on the world and semiconductor industry. He will join Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger on stage for a fireside chat to share his thoughts on the future of artificial intelligence.
It was a bizarre affair lasting under three minutes. Even more bizarrely, in his closing remarks, Gelsinger implied that Intel was already partnering with Altman and hinted at more to come.
Thus far, only the opening keynote, a combination of Pat Gelsinger and Stuart Pann, along with the video of Gelsinger’s Q&A session with Sam Altman are available publicly. There were additional sessions led by two other senior Intel executives, the heads of the Manufacturing & Technology Development organisations.
If /when these sessions become publicly available, I’ll scrutinise them for any additional details. You can find the keynote itself here, press release here and keynote highlights here. There’s also some limited coverage of the event on Tom’s Hardware.
In our analysis of the keynote and related materials, we shall cover the following topics
Why was Altman there and why was his session so ridiculously short?
Can Intel realistically become the global #2 foundry by 2030?
Our guesstimate of the $ size of the Microsoft announcement and our take on why Nadella is teaming up with Intel, given that he’s already partnering with TSMC
An extract from Intel’s 2023 Annual Report that implies Intel lacks confidence in their own foundry roadmap
Stuart Pann’s sneaky dig at TSMC
A brief commentary on Intel’s key financial metrics over the three years since Mr. Gelsinger took the helm. Spoiler alert, it’s pretty ugly.
Thanks as always for reading!
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