Intel’s AI chief and chief technology officer He has only lasted six months in office.. Sachin Katti, the executive Intel promoted in April, is leaving the chip giant to join OpenAI.
Katti was one of the first appointments of new Intel CEO Lip Bu Tan when he took over in March. His resignation is a bad news for Intel’s imagea giant that is going through the worst moments in its long history and that has serious problems to overcome, both in its semiconductor manufacturing division and in its commercial division, although it continues to lead sales of processors for PCs.
Intel has had difficulties in developing competitive AI accelerators that match those of its established rivals, NVIDIA and AMD. It is also behind hyperscalers like Google and AWS, which developed their own AI silicon, and probably can’t currently take on Broadcom when it comes to designing AI hardware, a capability that OpenAI apparently values so much that he turned to this company to build his own custom accelerators.
The departure of Intel’s AI chief just six months after taking the position confirms all these difficulties. As for OpenAI, it continues to accumulate talent in its ranks ahead of a potential multi-million-dollar IPO. Although it claims to be losing money every quarter, it has committed to investing tens of billions in projects including building giant data centers, creating a consumer AI device and developing artificial general intelligence (machines with cognitive abilities superior to those of humans), an effort that Katti cited as a factor in his departure from Intel.
EOpenAI President and Co-Founder Greg Brockman welcomed the former Intel executive to the promising AI company. Cat responded with a publication in which it was declared “excited by the opportunity to work with Brockman, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and others at the company on building the computing infrastructure for general AI”.
He also said that he is very grateful for the tremendous opportunity and experience at Intel over the last 4 years leading networking, edge computing and AI, adding that it was «the privilege of his life to have worked closely» with Intel CEO Lip Bu Tan, former CEO Pat Gelsinger and head of networking and edge computing Nick McKeown.
As for Intel, what can I say… there is no comeback and each news that arrives complicates its situation more. It is unknown who will be the next AI chief and chief technology officer. A very important position in the era of AI whose leadership will be assumed (at least for the moment) by CEO Lip Bu Tan himself.
