Latest news with #Rolodex
CNBC
29-05-2025
- Business
- CNBC
Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan has a long track record in the chip industry. Now he needs a big customer
When Lip-Bu Tan was named CEO of Intel a little over two months ago, he brought with him plenty of name recognition. Tan spent 12 years running Cadence Design Systems and before that was a prominent venture capitalist. He's also held board seats at SoftBank and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. "Lip-Bu's Rolodex is like nobody else's in the semiconductor industry," Intel CFO David Zinsner said at a financial conference this month. Zinsner said Tan recently met with 22 potential customers and partners in a single day. At age 65, Tan is going to need more than a vast database of contacts and four decades of operating and investing experience to turn around the company that put the silicon in Silicon Valley but is struggling to stay relevant in a market that's increasingly centered around artificial intelligence. Once the world's largest chipmaker, Intel has lost 70% of its value since early 2020. It's roughly flat since Tan was named as CEO on March 12. Tan's jam-packed schedule in large part reflects a need to change the industry's perception of Intel. No longer the dominant player in semiconductors, Intel is trying to pivot into chip manufacturing, especially as the U.S. focuses on investing in onshoring critical technologies. Tan has been listening to customers to find out specific technical requirements they would need from Intel as a foundry, he's said in public remarks. Under Tan's predecessor, Pat Gelsinger, Intel spent $90 billion between 2021 and 2024 on building the company's foundry operations and unlocking additional U.S. government funding. Capital expenditures in 2025 are expected to reach $18 billion. Investors, and eventually the board, lost trust in Gelsinger's ability to generate much of a return on that investment, leading to his ouster late last year. In an industry where roadmaps and capital plans are measured in five-year increments, Tan is under pressure to start building confidence immediately. "The foundry business, it operates at a different time scale," said Alvin Nguyen, an analyst at Forrester. "It operates with a level of investment that is tough to stomach, and very few publicly traded companies can deal with it." Intel faces a plethora of other challenges that all predate Tan's tenure. The company's central processors, or CPUs, that for decades were the most expensive and important part in computers, have been supplanted by AI chips, primarily graphics processing units, or GPUs, from Nvidia. Meanwhile, Advanced Micro Devices has picked up substantial market share in CPUs and server chips, and Qualcomm has emerged as a big challenger as well. Tan is working on an AI strategy under Sachin Katti, who was named chief technology officer in April after joining the company in 2021. Tan was born in Malaysia and raised in Singapore. He moved to the U.S. in the 1970s and studied nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He's since touched just about every aspect of the chip industry. Before joining Intel, he was CEO of Cadence, which makes electronic design automation, or EDA, software, widely used by engineers at fabless chip companies to design new processors. As a venture capitalist at Walden International, Tan invested in Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, China's national foundry, in 2001, and was on the board for over a decade. He's now betting on Intel, not just with his time but also his wallet. When he became CEO, he bought $25 million of shares, which he'll have to hold in order to earn his full compensation over the next five years. Tan has been keeping a fairly low profile since starting the gig in March. He's yet to sit for a press interview, and Intel declined to make Tan available for this story. But in his two public speeches as CEO at Intel events, he's laid out elements of his strategy. "We need to do a better job — make it easier for all of you to use our technology," Tan said at a foundry event earlier this month. "We will rapidly embrace industrial standards, EDA tools and best design practices." The fastest way to change the trajectory would be to announce a big foundry customer. Locking in substantial orders would serve as both a vote of approval to other potential customers and a signal to Wall Street that all those expenses will soon start turning into revenue. "One Nvidia, one Qualcomm, one Apple, one something of volume that really shows this meaningful commitment for the fab to build significant volume would really change the whole narrative," said Daniel Newman, CEO of industry research firm The Futurum Group. Tan's second public appearance as CEO came in April at Intel's Foundry Direct Connect event in San Jose, California, a few miles from the company's headquarters. There he hinted at one of his key objectives: rebuilding confidence. "This is a truly a service business, and that is built on the foundational principle of trust," Tan said. "You have to be patient to earn your trust." At the event, populated largely by people from the insular world of chip design and manufacturing, Tan directly addressed foundry customers, discussing the company's specific technologies in power and packaging that put it in position to take on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the largest foundry in the world. Outside the convention center, banners still hung promoting the Nvidia GTC conference, which had taken place the prior month and packed the building's ballroom. Tan mostly acted like an emcee, calling up the CEOs of chip design partners such as Synopsys, Cadence and Siemens, who took the stage to discuss using Intel's technology. A key issue for Intel to address is the broadening of its foundry, which was originally designed for its own chip design teams, meaning some of the tools and infrastructure were company-specific. Intel has given the name 18A to its chip technology that it hopes to start producing in volume this year. "One thing about 18A was, it was developed initially as just something for Intel, and we intercepted it relatively early," Zinsner said earlier this month. That allowed the company to develop process design kits, or PDKs, "for the industry, but it still was not from the ground up developed as a foundry node," he said. Zinsner said the company's next chip generation, 14A, will be built for external customers. Analysts say that 18A may be Intel's first foundry process that could beat TSMC's rival process to market. Tan also recognizes that TSMC has created an industry standard, so using the same tools and technology would allow companies to more simply bring over work from other foundries. He said Intel is making its PDK easier to use. "My top priority is to make it easier for the ecosystem to do business with Intel," he said. One of the speakers at the event was Anirudh Devgan, who succeeded Tan as CEO of Cadence. Tan asked Devgan what AI chip companies need to see if they're to build on Intel. Devgan said the most important consideration is the need to focus on what the customer wants rather than what Intel prefers. "Intel Foundry, as you all know, is like the service business, so the customer comes first," Devgan said. "I know Lip-Bu has very good instincts to understand what the customer wants." It's a stark change in approach for a company that for decades was focused on selling its own chips and not on creating an ecosystem. In a podcast earlier this year, TSMC founder Morris Chang said that Intel, during its glory years, acted "like they were the only guy with microprocessors." If there was a disappointment at the Intel event, it was the lack of an announcement about a major new customer. Zinsner previously said, in response to a question about how many customers Intel had signed up for its foundry, that the company first needs to "eat its own dogfood," indicating that the 18A process would be primarily used by Intel itself. While Tan looks outward for business development, he's turning inward to try to fix corporate culture, flattening the organization, which grew fiercely in recent years as it staffed up to build the foundry unit. Intel said on its April earnings call that job cuts will come this quarter, though the company didn't provide a specific number. An Intel representative declined to comment on the matter. Intel announced in August, while Gelsinger was still in charge, that it was laying off 15,000 employees and would explore cuts in its portfolio. Wall Street welcomes more belt tightening but warns that the company can't cut its way to a successful revival. Deutsche Bank's Ross Seymour, who recommends holding the stock, wrote in a May note that, even with the "welcome and necessary cost-cutting actions," the company's "path to meaningful earnings/free cash flow generation remains cloudy and highly dependent on a turnaround" in the foundry business. Equally important to Tan is getting rid of what he views as too much bureaucracy. "It has been eye-opening for me to see how much time and energy is spent on internal administrative work that does not move our business forward," Tan wrote, in a memo to employees in April. He said Intel would have to learn how to do more with fewer people and that employees must be back in the office for at least four days a week by September. "I've been surprised to learn that, in recent years, the most important KPI for many managers at Intel has been the size of their teams," Tan wrote, referring to key performance indicators. "Going forward, this will not be the case." Tan also promoted several engineering leaders, giving him greater visibility into the organization. Zinsner said Tan has between 15 and 17 direct reports, because he wants to be closer to the "lowest" levels of the organization. "He's hearing the good, the bad, the ugly of what's going on, so that he can help address those," Zinsner said.
Boston Globe
17-05-2025
- Sport
- Boston Globe
‘It's what he was made for': Alex Bregman's meticulous, obsessive approach has resonated with the Red Sox.
'They never asked me to do anything,' said Bregman. 'They just told me if I wanted to do anything, I better work — work for it every day.' The message took, and resonates decades later in a way that has astonished members of the Red Sox. On the morning of 1:35 p.m. day games, players often drift into the clubhouse between 10 and 11 a.m. and ease into pregame schedules. There's plenty of downtime in gym shorts on days without scheduled on-field batting practice. Advertisement Before a recent contest, however, Bregman — already in his uniform pants — concluded a meeting with Red Sox hitting coaches and analysts at 10 a.m. prior to jumping into a batting cage. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'He was probably wearing batting gloves [in the meeting],' joked assistant hitting coach Dillon Lawson. 'There's probably text messages or phone calls that even happened before that [meeting]. There's definitely ones that happen after the games, on the road, on the off-days. 'This is what he does. It's what he was made for. It's always on his mind and I think somehow, some way, he's good with that,' added Lawson. 'In my Rolodex, he's one of a kind.' More than an hour after that same day game — a Sox win — Bregman remained in his dirt-covered uniform pants, sitting at his locker. Teammate after teammate — many of them pausing for a visit after they'd gotten dressed and were on their way out of the clubhouse — approached him in what looked like a teacher's office hours. Advertisement Bregman, armed with an iPad, digested at-bats, pitches, and plays. He talked about approaches, mechanics, mind-sets — seeking and giving feedback to hitters, pitchers, and anyone else. 'I just think he has this nature to connect to people, whether it's catchers, pitching staff, hitters, the cook,' said Sox hitting coach Pete Fatse. Bregman is, of course, off to a phenomenal start. Typically a slow starter who gains steam as the season progresses (.817 career OPS before the All-Star break, .906 after it), he entered Saturday with the highest average (.309), OBP (.389), slugging percentage (.579), and OPS (.968) of his career through 45 games. His 11 homers are the second most of his career (behind only the 14 he hit through 45 contests in 2019, when MLB balls behaved like golf balls), and his 26 extra-base hits are his most ever. His in-game impact has been immense. Yet Bregman is less focused on those numbers than on the before-and-after of games, ultimately believing the behind-the-scenes activity is what funnels into results. In prior seasons, he'd been goal- and outcome-focused, basing his view of success on whether he went 2 for 4 or reached certain benchmarks in his back-of-the-baseball-card numbers. This season, Bregman has reoriented his view. He recently picked up the book 'Atomic Habits' by James Clear ('I needed to read a book — I literally was just like, I haven't read a book since I don't even know when,' he said), and connected with the message of focusing on stacking habit changes to achieve impact rather than chasing bottom-line goals. Advertisement Bregman talks of 'falling in love with the work before the game' and then allowing himself to treat the game itself as the reward for everything he does over the rest of his day. 'I've always loved working and the game. I always have. It's always been the most fun thing in the world, just working at the game of baseball. I've always been super-passionate about it,' he said. 'But I feel like putting more emphasis on the importance of the work as opposed to putting more emphasis on the results of the game. 'It's easy to get caught up in the numbers that you're putting up, but I feel like the best points of my career, the thing I've been focused on has always been the process of what I'm doing before the game in the cage, how I'm working on my swing mechanics, how I'm working on controlling the strike zone, or how I'm working on preparing to face a pitcher,' he added. 'As opposed to going out there and worrying so much about the results you feel from Day One, let's worry about just executing the swing in the cage and working on the process in the cage. And it's been a good start. There's a long way to go, a lot of season left, and want to continue to improve.' That approach has been fascinating and sometimes amusing to teammates. There have been days when Bregman has been hitless but has found reason to take satisfaction in how he's approached his preparation. There have been days when Bregman has collected multiple hits but felt that his swing was imprecise, inspiring a round of self-criticism and batting cage engineering to fine-tune. Advertisement 'His attention to detail is so refined. One day he went 2 for 4, and he showed up the next day. It was like, 'My swing's messed up,' ' recounted Story. 'He knows that if he's going to move the right way, that's what's going to play over the season. He's very, very, very detail-oriented with that. If it's not how he wants it to feel, then he's not buying into [results].' It is one thing for a player to go down the rabbit hole of his own swing and work. For instance, there are similarities between Bregman's meticulousness with his own swing and that of J.D. Martinez. But members of the Sox have been fascinated to witness Bregman's Pedroia-esque interest in his teammates — and in trying to push them to chase high standards. 'He challenges everyone to never really turn it off,' said outfielder Rob Refsnyder. 'When we grab dinners, he's constantly talking about the next game, the next pitcher, defense, base running. He's the ultimate baseball guy, and he never turns it off. He really doesn't. Every conversation circles back to winning the next game, winning the next at-bat. It's truly special. 'I know for a fact he's made some of our younger players better [be] hungry, and [helped them] understand this is what greatness is,' he added. 'I'm sure those guys have learned a lot from him, because I'm 34 and I've learned a lot from him already.' Advertisement Of course, the purpose of that advice — as well as Bregman's work — is ultimately to contribute to victories. Those haven't come in a way that the Red Sox had hoped to this point. The team entered Saturday with a 22-24 record. But Bregman remains optimistic that a sound approach will ultimately allow the team to start getting the results it expects — and that there's a simple formula to improving. 'I just want to prepare at an elite level and win,' he said. 'I want to win, and I know that if we get the best out of everyone, we'll win a lot of games.' Alex Speier can be reached at
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Caitlin Clark Leaves Indiana Fever Practice Player Speechless
If you want to know how locked in Caitlin Clark is ahead of the Indiana Fever's WNBA season opener against Angel Reese and the Chicago Sky on Saturday, just look at the reaction of the player guarding her in practice this week. Clark was on fire in preseason, averaging 14.5 points, 6.0 rebounds, 6.0 assists in the two games she played while shooting a sizzling 7-for-14 from three-point range. The Fever went a perfect 3-0 with wins over the Washington Mystics, Brazil national team and Atlanta Dream. Advertisement Ahead of the rivalry matchup in the regular season opener, Indiana posted practice footage of the returning WNBA All-Star that illustrated just how unguardable she is. Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark (22).Dale Zanine-Imagn Images Viral videos of Clark in practice contributed to her legendary status coming out of college at the University of Iowa. The NCAA all-time leading scorer recently claimed to David Letterman that she once scored 22 points in two minutes playing against male practice players — and her words hardly did the video justice. "We ended up winning and our boy practice players didn't hear the end of it," Clark said. "They still don't. I love to bring it up." Advertisement Now, those Iowa boys have company in Clark's trash-talking Rolodex. She left one of the Fever practice players in shock at Wednesday's practice with a fadeaway three that sparked a viral reaction. As Clark strutted away confidently, all her defender could do was hold his hands up in disbelief. Many fans on social media joined in pity for the hopeless practice player, with some likening his shrug to that of Hailey Van Lith — now on the Chicago Sky roster — when she had to defend Clark in college. Whether or not Clark shows hits any circus shots against the Sky, history says it should be an entertaining game. During Clark and Reese's rookie year, Indiana won the season series 3-1, but two of the four contests were decided by a single point. Advertisement The Fever and the Sky are scheduled to tip off at 3 p.m. ET on Saturday on ABC, following the conclusion of the Las Vegas Aces vs. New York Liberty game at 1 p.m. ET. Related: Caitlin Clark Gets Big Reality Check From Indiana Fever Coach Related: Caitlin Clark Training To 'Destroy' WNBA This Year
Business Insider
12-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
How Marc Benioff's 'side hustle' scored a $600 million windfall from the Google-Wiz deal
Salesforce chair and CEO Marc Benioff says angel investing is a "side hustle." His returns say otherwise. Benioff — who shared his investing strategy with Business Insider in an interview — has backed some of Silicon Valley's biggest winners. Salesforce Ventures has $6.8 billion under management and has deployed $600 million of its $1 billion Generative AI Fund, including a first-quarter investment in Anthropic, according to a spokesperson. One of its biggest wins is the cybersecurity startup Wiz, which recently sold to Google for a whopping $32 billion. Salesforce Ventures, which first invested in Wiz's Series B in 2021, will make roughly $600 million on the deal, Benioff said. (Salesforce's profit on the Wiz acquisition has not been previously reported. A spokesperson for Salesforce Ventures declined to comment on the firm's profits from the Wiz acquisition, citing the ongoing nature of the deal.) "I worked directly with Assaf Rappaport," Benioff said, referring to Wiz's CEO and cofounder. "I enjoy working with entrepreneurs. I relate to them." It's a hands-on approach that in many ways mirrors the early mentorship Benioff, who runs Salesforce's venture arm and writes angel checks through his family office, Time Ventures, received in Silicon Valley. Founder mode Benioff's father, who owned a local department store in San Francisco, instilled in him an entrepreneurial spirit from an early age, which fueled Benioff's early career moves. In high school, Benioff sold his first startup, software that taught users how to juggle, to a computer magazine for $75. At 15, he founded Liberty Software, which made early computer games. While in college, Benioff spent a summer interning at Apple, writing code for the Macintosh team under cofounder Steve Jobs. It also gave Benioff an early mentor in Jobs. "There would be no without Steve Jobs," Benioff said in a 2013 interview with Entrepreneur magazine. Fast-forward a few decades, and Benioff is at the helm of Salesforce, a $255 billion market cap Fortune 500 software company, still thinking like a founder. Working with and investing in founders, Benioff said, encourages him to think more deeply about how he's running his own business. "I am one myself," Benioff said of being an entrepreneur. "I still feel like I'm running a company where you have to be able to adjust to the market as it adjusts and do whatever you can to be successful." Paying it forward Founders in Benioff's portfolio don't just get capital — they get his Rolodex. "I can offer way more value to these entrepreneurs than any venture capitalist," Benioff said. Benioff said that founders who stand out to him create a shared vision. "Many of these people are visionaries," he said. "They're seeing things that don't exist. Am I also able to see what they're seeing?" He also looks for entrepreneurs who have learned what works and what doesn't, and how to adapt based on that experience. One of those visionaries is Richard Socher, the founder of the AI-powered search engine "Marc has been an incredible supporter of my journey," Socher told BI in an email. "Not only did he lead our seed round for which also included the domain he had owned since 1996, Marc has opened his network to me, introducing me to early customers and CEOs at Fortune 100 companies." Benioff's Time Ventures invested in 's $20 million seed round in 2021, and Salesforce Ventures backed the company in its $25 million Series A in 2022 and its $54 million Series B in 2024, according to PitchBook. When asked about the AI boom, Benioff said he's still able to discern the most compelling companies from the bubbly ones, pointing to his investments in Socher's and the AI terminal startup Warp, which was founded by Benioff's cousin Zach Lloyd. "They have real revenue lines and real customers and real products that are offering real value," Benioff said. "When you see that, then you've got to say, 'That's a real company.'" Benioff invested in Warp's $17 million Series A1 in April 2022, according to PitchBook. This reality-based outlook is necessary when investing in startups with under $100 million in revenue, which Benioff called "fragile companies." It also prevents him from romanticizing early-stage investing, which he doesn't think is right for everyone. "I don't encourage my family and friends to get involved in this," he added. "It's very high risk. Most of these companies do not work out." Amid the AI hype cycle and a boom in venture investing, Benioff still sees founders' grit — even in himself. It's a mentality he, after decades of building Salesforce into a giant, hasn't quite yet shaken. "We still pivot like an entrepreneur has to pivot," Benioff said. "We're still in founder mode at Salesforce. We're just a 75,000-person startup — there's no difference."
Business Insider
07-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
KKR exec tells young people to get up from their desks if they want to be successful dealmakers
If you want to be a private-equity dealmaker, you can start by getting up from your desk. That was the advice from Alisa Amarosa Wood, a KKR executive, at the Milken Institute conference in Los Angeles on Tuesday. "If you're sitting at your desk, you're not building personal relationships every day," said Wood, co-CEO of KKR's Private Equity Conglomerate LLC, an operating company formed to acquire, own, and control portfolio companies. "You should be talking to three to five people you've never talked to before," Wood said. "That's how you source deals. That's how you build a Rolodex. That's how you build a pipeline." Wood said KKR talks to thousands and thousands of companies a year to do 20 to 40 deals. All of those conversations are about building relationships, she said, echoing comments made by KKR's cofounders at a Milken panel on Monday. "You might be talking to the same company for two decades before you can go effectuate something that's called private equity," Wood said. "You're not going to fly in and assume you're going to have two meetings and get a deal done." A.J. Rohde, senior partner at Thoma Bravo, a buyout firm focused on tech and software companies, said that his firm tries to "empower" its younger employees to look for deals themselves. "The senior people have walked the floor every day like a trading floor," Rohde said. "What are you working on? People need help. They maybe hit a roadblock on diligence. Help them out, give them a perspective, spend five minutes, and then they'll go figure something else out." The whole goal is getting the youngest employees to feel ready to step into the dealmaker's shoes, he said. "The best deals happen at a grassroots level," Rohde said. "That's because some VP went on a line and she or he pushed it and made that her career, and she fought for a right to get that, but you were there helping her early to help you make that decision. Those are our best deals." The comments come at a tough time for the private equity industry. Firms have a lot of money to spend, as well as companies to sell. Dealmaking, however, has been muted this year amid concerns about the impact of Trump's tariff wars on the economy and stock market.
