Intel Hiring Top Talent From Rivals TSMC, Samsung

Part of Intel’s plan to return to a leadership position in the semiconductor market has been to build best-in-class hardware, both for itself and for the foundry customers it hopes to attract. That’s why a foundation of its IDM 2.0 comeback strategy involves its a separate foundry business, known as Intel Foundry Services (IFS). The nascent company hopes to one day rival the likes of TSMC, with companies clamoring for capacity on its fabs. One way IFS is hoping to achieve that goal is by poaching talent from its biggest rivals; Samsung, TSMC, and a few others.

According to The Register, one of its latest hires is a gentleman named Suk Lee. His LinkedIn page indicates he spent more than 15 years at TSMC, most recently as a VP in the Design Infrastructure Management Division. Prior to that he spent 13 years as senior director of the same division. His new job title at Intel is VP of the Ecosystem Technology Office.

Another executive named Michael Chang seemingly left alongside Mr. Lee. He is a notable hire for Intel, as he had been with TSMC since 1991. Though he began as a program manager, he rose up through the ranks over his 31 years with the company. His last role was Director of Advanced Technology Solutions. His LinkedIn profile states he worked on processes ranging from 28nm to 3nm, and specializes in high-performance computing. He is now the VP of customer enablement for Intel Foundry Services.

Another major league hire was Hong Hao, who was previously with Samsung for 13 years. He joined Intel specifically to help build out its IFS strategy. His LinkedIn profiles states, “Responsible for leading the formulation of Intel Foundry Services (IFS) business strategies and execution of worldwide customer engagement plans to grow IFS revenue and customer base.” He joined Intel in 2021 as it was just starting to ramp IFS into a real business.

Intel has also recently made headline-grabbing hires from Apple, AMD, and even Nvidia. In August of last year it snatched an engineer who helped develop Nvidia’s ray tracing technology. It added to that success by poaching Jeff Wilcox from Apple to lead its SoC efforts. He had previously helped lead Apple’s M1 development, so this was a major upset in the industry. AMD has also lost at least two top executives to Intel over the years. It most notably snagged GPU chief Raja Koduri from AMD in 2017 and Rohit Verma earlier this year.

Of course, there’s probably also a situation where Intel has lost some key folks as well. The semiconductor industry is financially huge, but draws on a relatively small pool of talent. It isn’t all that unusual for executives and engineers to move between companies.

Despite high-profile poaching from its rivals, the ongoing launch of its Arc GPUs has been anything but smooth. Not only have there been many delays, but the first benchmarks for its entry-level desktop GPU left a lot to be desired. Intel has a very long road ahead of it if it expects to compete with TSMC as a foundry. As The Register notes, IFS brought in $283 million in revenue for the first quarter. TSMC, on the other hand, did $17.5 billion in business. Samsung also dwarfed Intel’s efforts to the tune of $5.3 billion in revenue.

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