Intel makes high-level hires while factory workers are warned of layoffs

As part of efforts to turn around Intel's fortunes, the company made a series of senior engineering appointments.

CEO Lip-Bu Tan is looking to focus on customer relationships and shore up the company's foundry business, cutting staff and reorganizing top management.

And as part of its plans to become a more engineering-focused company, Intel has now hired three chip industry executives for engineering and networking roles.

Greg Ernst, who's been with Intel for more than 20 years, has been named chief revenue officer. He has headed up the company's sales and marketing group (SMG) since May, after leading SMG across the Americas. He will continue to report to Tan.

Meanwhile, Srinivasan Iyengar has been named as senior vice president and fellow, leading a new customer engineering center of excellence and joining the Intel executive team, also reporting to Tan.

He joins the company from Cadence Design Systems, where he led global silicon engineering, working to help customers create best-in-class custom silicon, including a deep focus on hyperscale data center solutions optimized for key workloads.

Jean-Didier Allegrucci, meanwhile, has been named as vice president of AI System on Chip (SoC) engineering, responsible for managing the development of multiple SoCs that will form part of Intel's AI roadmap.

He joins from Rain AI, a startup where he led AI silicon engineering, after spending 17 years at Apple. There, he oversaw the development of more than 30 SoCs used across many of the company's flagship products.

And, finally, Shailendra Desai is to become VP of AI fabric and networking, where he will lead the development of innovative SoC architectures for Intel's AI GPUs and forward-looking roadmap.

Desai joins from Google, where he led silicon engineering, architectural design, and platform solutions across multiple mobile SoCs. He was previously the founder and CEO of Provino Technologies, an SoC startup acquired by Google in 2021. Both Allegrucci and Desai will report to Sachin Katti, Intel's chief technology and AI officer.

"We see significant opportunities ahead to strengthen our product offerings and meet the changing needs of our customers," said Tan.

"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."

However, the news is less good for many other Intel employees, who this week learned that the company is planning to lay off as many as one-fifth of its staff.

"These are difficult actions, but essential to meet our affordability challenges and the current financial position of the company. It drives pain to every individual," Intel manufacturing vice president Naga Chandrasekaran reportedly wrote in a memo to employees.

He said the company is aiming for a cut in numbers of between 15% and 20%, with most of the cuts to take place in July. There are expected to be layoffs at Intel factories around the world, but particularly in Oregon, where the company currently employs 20,000 people.