Who is new Intel CEO Tan Lip-Bu?

SAN FRANCISCO – Mr Tan Lip-Bu may be one of the most powerful technology executives you have never heard of as he steps into one of the highest-profile jobs on the planet, chief executive of troubled, storied chipmaker Intel.

Mr Tan,

named Intel CEO on March 12

, faces an enormous challenge in turning around the operations of a company that put the “silicon” in Silicon Valley.

To right the chip industry’s biggest ship, Mr Tan, 65, may use underdog strategies that helped him turn around smaller companies that later became big.

While little known to the public, his advantage is that virtually every one of Intel’s former and potential customers knows him and has done business with him, either buying one of the many start-ups he backed or using software from a company he ran. His efforts are also likely to be closely watched by US President Donald Trump, who is eager for Intel to rebound.

Here is more about him:

From Muar to Singapore

He was born in 1959 in Muar, Johor, raised in Singapore and is now a naturalised American citizen. 

Mr Tan’s father was the chief editor of Malaysian Chinese-language daily Nanyang Siang Pau, while his mother was a teacher.

He later grew up in Singapore, where he attended Nanyang University (NU) and studied physics. His mother once ran the university’s women’s hostel. NU later merged with the University of Singapore to form the National University of Singapore.

Mr Tan, who skipped a couple of years in secondary school on academic excellence, graduated from NU in 1978 when he was just 19.

From 2006 to 2011, Mr Tan was a trustee of Nanyang Technological University, which occupies the site of the old NU.

Off to America

Mr Tan attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on a scholarship, getting a master’s degree in nuclear engineering in 1981.

Despite being offered a full scholarship for a PhD, he left MIT and joined EDS Nuclear, a US engineering and consulting company.

He later went on to attain an MBA from the University of San Francisco.

Venture investor

Mr Tan poured money into hundreds of start-ups through Walden International, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm he founded in 1987. Early backers included Mr Philip Yeo, former chairman of the Economic Development Board, and Ms Ho Ching, former CEO of Temasek.

Growing from US$20 million (S$26.7 million) upon its founding to US$2 billion by 2001, the firm has focused its investments on semiconductors, alternative energy, and digital media businesses and start-ups in the US and Asia, such as Singapore’s Creative Technology, Chinese shopping platform Meituan and chip giant SMIC. 

Mr Tan believed that relatively small teams of start-up engineers with good chip design ideas could successfully compete against incumbent chip giants. For example, he took a stake in Annapurna Labs, which was later purchased by Amazon.com for US$370 million and became the heart of its in-house chip division.

He also invested in Nuvia, which Qualcomm bought for US$1.4 billion in 2021, making it a central part of its push to compete with Intel in the laptop and PC chip markets.

Mr Tan remains actively involved in start-ups that could either become competitors or acquisition targets for Intel. For example, earlier this week, he invested in artificial intelligence (AI) photonic start-up Celestial AI, which is backed by Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices.

For his breakthrough investments in Asian tech start-ups, Forbes dubbed him “the pioneer of Asian VC” in 2001.

CEO of Cadence

From 2009 to 2021, he was CEO of Cadence Design Systems, a then struggling chip design software firm he turned around into a powerhouse now valued at US$80 billion.

Mr Tan focused Cadence around supplying the software for sophisticated designs and partnered closely with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which from its founding days swore it would focus only on manufacturing.

Over his time at Cadence, the firm’s stock rose 3,200 per cent, and it landed Apple as one of its largest customers as the iPhone maker shifted away from suppliers such as Intel and towards its own chips.

Cadence’s tools also became central to chip industry firms such as Broadcom, which helps Google, Amazon and others design their own AI chips and have them made by TSMC.

In 2016, the Global Semiconductor Alliance gave him the Dr Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award. In 2022, he received the Semiconductor Industry Association’s Robert N. Noyce Award for outstanding contributions to the industry.

Well-connected tech exec

Mr Tan was also on the boards of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and SoftBank Group. In 2017, he was ranked No.1 for the most well-connected executive in the tech industry by analytics firm Relationship Science.

Appointed to Intel board

Mr Tan was appointed to Intel’s board in 2022 as part of a plan to restore the company’s place as the leading global chipmaker. A year later, Intel expanded his responsibilities to include oversight of manufacturing operations.

However, he stepped down from the board in August 2024 over disagreements on how to turn around the company.

His family

Mr Tan lives in Piedmont, California, with his wife Ysa Loo, a former banker. They have two sons – Andrew and Elliott, who both received their master’s degrees from Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Engineering – and three grandchildren. REUTERS, THE STRAITS TIMES, CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY website