Bloomberg this week took a deep dive into how Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan is working to rescue one of Silicon Valley’s most storied and stumbling chipmakers. It’s worth a read, but it really undersells the most surprising part of the story. Intel’s stock price has risen a whopping 490% over the past year. Wall Street’s bets may get ahead of the company’s actual turnaround.
Tan, which took over in March last year, spent much of its first year scrambling to strike a sweet deal with the U.S. government (now Intel’s third-largest shareholder), strike a factory partnership with Elon Musk, and secure preliminary manufacturing deals with Apple and Tesla rather than restructure.
The fundamentals are still a mess. Intel’s chip production lags far behind industry leader TSMC, and employees told Bloomberg that Tan declined to give specifics internally and that some teams are adjusting rather than recovering missed deadlines.
But investors are betting big on the bigger picture. Whether executions will follow is a multi-billion dollar question.
