Trump Demands Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan Resign as Board Weighs Ouster

Thursday morning, 9:47 AM. Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan was five months into rescuing America's most important failing chipmaker when Donald Trump decided he had to go.

"The CEO of INTEL is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "There is no other solution to this problem."

No evidence. No specifics. Just an executive death sentence, delivered in all caps.

The attack sent Intel's stock down 3.1% to $19.77. But here's the part Trump didn't know — or didn't bother to say: Tan was already fighting for his job against his own board of directors, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke to the Wall Street Journal.

The president's post didn't light the match. It just kicked the door open and let the wind in.

The Setup

Two days earlier, Senator Tom Cotton fired the first shot. The Arkansas Republican sent Intel's board a letter questioning Tan's history with Walden International — the venture firm he chairs that pumped $5 billion into over 600 companies. More than 100 of those were Chinese tech firms. At least eight had ties to China's military, Reuters reported in April.

Cotton also pointed to something more recent. Cadence Design Systems, where Tan was CEO from 2009 to 2021, had just pleaded guilty to selling chip design tools to China's National University of Defense Technology. The company paid $140 million to settle.

Actually, wait — the Justice Department gave them a 20% discount for "partial cooperation." Whatever that means.

The Chinese university? They used the software to simulate nuclear explosions.

"Intel is required to be a responsible steward of American taxpayer dollars," Cotton wrote. Fair point — the company got $8 billion in CHIPS Act funding.

By Thursday, the pile-on was underway. Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno wanted a fraud investigation. Rick Scott jumped in. Jim Banks too. Trump's post transformed a pointed inquiry into a political execution.

Intel's initial response was corporate wallpaper: Tan and the board are "deeply committed to advancing U.S. national and economic security interests."

Then Thursday night, Tan broke his silence.

Tan Fights Back

In a staff memo posted on Intel's website, he claimed the board's full backing. "We are engaging with the Administration to address the matters that have been raised and ensure they have the facts," he wrote.

Forty years in America. Always operated within legal and ethical standards. The usual defensive playbook.

Except.

He said the board supports him. People familiar with the matter tell a different story.

The Deeper Fight

Inside Intel's Santa Clara headquarters — that sprawling glass-and-concrete monument to Silicon Valley's better days — the real war started months ago.

Tan took over in March with one job: save the company that invented the microprocessor from drifting into irrelevance. Intel's market value had been cut in half since early 2024. TSMC was beating it at manufacturing. Nvidia had pulled far ahead in AI chips. The former king of semiconductors was worth $87 billion; Nvidia was pushing $4.4 trillion.

Part of the deal when he joined: divest his Chinese holdings, according to a person familiar with the arrangement.

Clean slate. Fresh start.

But Tan walked into a board already split on a basic, existential question — should Intel stay in the chip-making business at all?

Board chairman Frank Yeary, a former investment banker, had drawn up a plan to spin off Intel's manufacturing arm entirely. His blueprint? Sell pieces to Nvidia and Amazon, maybe even unload the whole thing to TSMC. You know, the very dependency Washington is desperate to avoid.

Tan pushed back. Intel's factories were the company's core and America's safety net. The foundry business was bleeding cash, sure, but it brought in a third of revenue and was the only U.S.-owned line of defense against total reliance on Asia's chipmakers.

The philosophical fight quickly turned practical.

Tan lined up Wall Street banks for a multi-billion-dollar capital raise. The board killed it, suggesting maybe 2026. He chased an AI acquisition to narrow the gap with Nvidia. Directors debated until a rival swooped in.

"There are no more blank checks," Tan wrote in a recent staff memo.

What he didn't add: the board had taken away his pen.

The China Problem

Tan's vulnerabilities weren't a secret.

Born in Malaysia, naturalized American, he built his fortune partly through Walden International. The venture firm invested at least $200 million in Chinese companies from 2012 to 2024 alone. But zoom out further: Walden had stakes in more than 100 Chinese firms over the decades, including Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp.

SMIC. China's largest chipmaker now. Key partner to Huawei.

Tan served on SMIC's board for 15 years until 2018. In 2020, the Commerce Department blacklisted it for military ties. Tan was long gone by then.

Still, optics.

This wasn't Tan's first rodeo with Washington scrutiny. The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party sent Walden a letter in 2023, demanding details about its China investments. Now Cotton was digging into Cadence, where employees had hidden a blacklisted Chinese military university as a customer during Tan's tenure.

The timing made everything worse. Tan had been making headway with Trump's people. In April, he met Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick for an hour, discussed wooing Apple as a customer, even penciled in a follow-up.

Then came the Truth Social blast.

Pat Gelsinger, his predecessor, had cultivated Vice President JD Vance before leaving — a connection one ex-board member says could have softened the blow.

Too late for Tan.

What Actually Matters

Intel announced 15,000 layoffs last month.

Its much-touted Ohio fab is now delayed into the 2030s, long after the promised "semiconductor renaissance." The company's European ambitions are shelved. For a business once synonymous with Silicon Valley, the playbook is shrinking fast.

Bernstein's Stacy Rasgon summed it up: "Trump likes winners; we suspect he does not find the failure that has permeated Intel in recent years all that attractive."

Look, in Trump's Washington, a Malaysian-born venture capitalist with Chinese investments was always going to be a tough sell. But Tan's real handicap isn't his past — it's a present in which the board has tied his hands. And now the president has piled on.

Some administration officials are already losing patience. They want a flagship U.S. chipmaker to deliver independence, not delays and excuses. Meanwhile, TSMC and Samsung are expanding U.S. plants while Intel stalls.

"This is definitely a crisis point," said Ray Wang of Futurum Group. "All this disruption could only make things worse."

Tan doesn't need the job. He's rich from turning Cadence into a powerhouse during his 12-year run. The harder question: can Intel afford another leadership vacuum while hemorrhaging cash, talent, and relevance?

"He clearly wants to do what is best for Intel," Rasgon said. "And we suppose now he will have to ask himself whether or not resigning would be best for them."

Trump gave him 24 hours to think about it.

The board? If Tan's Thursday memo is to be believed, they're standing behind him. If the people talking to the Journal are right, they've been asking for months.

Either way, Intel's still bleeding. The president's still tweeting. And America's chip independence remains a PowerPoint deck away from reality.

In Silicon Valley, they'd call this disruption. In Washington, it's just Thursday.

Why this matters:

• Intel's leadership war lays bare a bigger fault line in U.S. chip strategy: even with billions in federal support, it can't agree if American manufacturing is worth saving.
• Tan's claim of board unity versus reports of internal revolt shows how a presidential broadside can force everyone to pick sides — or at least pretend to.

Update: August 8, 2025, 02:28 AM PT
- Added Tan's Thursday night response claiming board support.
- Included details on Walden International's $5 billion invested across 600 companies — over 100 in China

Intel CEO Plans Billion-Dollar Chip Strategy Shift

Intel’s new CEO wants to abandon a multibillion-dollar chip technology his predecessor championed. The risky pivot to next-gen 14A aims to win back Apple and Nvidia from TSMC—but could cost billions in write-offs. Stakes couldn’t be higher.

implicator.aiMaria Garcia

Intel’s Recovery Strategy: Prioritizing Action Over Talk

Explore Intel’s robust recovery plan focused on action over rhetoric. Dive into their innovative strategies for a strong corporate comeback.

implicator.aiMarcus Schuler