Intel appoints engineering hires as part of CEO Tan's turnaround strategy

(Reuters) -Intel hired three chip industry executives in engineering and networking roles on Wednesday, as part of CEO Lip-Bu Tan's plans to overhaul top management and turn around the embattled chipmaker.

Tan's plans include trimming the company's large workforce, hiring new leadership, focusing on customer satisfaction and ensuring the foundry business succeeds.

Tan started to flatten Intel's leadership team since taking over as top boss in March with many important chip groups reporting directly into him, including sales veteran Greg Ernst, who was appointed chief revenue officer. Ernst previously served as Intel's head of U.S. sales and marketing operations.

In keeping with its plans to become more engineering-focused, the company also tapped Srinivasan Iyengar, Jean-Didier Allegrucci and Shailendra Desai to lead engineering roles.

"Greg, Srini, J-D and Shailendra are highly accomplished leaders with strong reputations across our ecosystem and they will each play important roles as we position our business for the future," Tan said.

Iyengar joined Intel from Cadence Design Systems and will lead a new customer engineering center, while Allegrucci, a former Rain AI executive, will manage the development of the AI System on Chip engineering. Desai, who joined Intel from Google, will head the development of new AI chip architectures.

Iyengar will report into Tan, while Allegrucci and Desai will report into Sachin Katti, Intel's chief technology and AI officer.

Intel has also reshuffled its board to make it more chip-industry-focused. Three board members did not stand for reelection at its 2025 annual meeting.

(Reporting by Zaheer Kachwala in Bengaluru; Editing by Pooja Desai)