Intel is no longer a single-story company with a single path forward. It’s a museum of strategic experiments and a battleground of visions: Pat Gelsinger’s technologically ambitious “IDM 2.0” rebuild, Craig Barrett’s blunt call for a massive cash infusion and structural clarity, and Lip-Bu Tan’s freshly minted CEO playbook that emphasizes partnerships, pragmatic restructuring, and renewed customer focus.
Each offers different tradeoffs for investors, employees, and customers — and each echoes, in its own way, the lessons of Andy Grove.
I’ve followed and worked with Intel for much of my career, and while I think many of Intel’s problems could be addressed with the kind of marketing effort Louis Gerstner took with IBM, those who have run and want to run Intel aren’t cut from Gerstner’s mold.
Let’s talk about these competing visions for Intel’s future, and then close with my favorite new desktop gaming computer, the HP Omen 45L
Pat Gelsinger: Rebuild the Foundry Empire
Pat Gelsinger brought back the swagger. His IDM 2.0 strategy promised nothing less than reclaiming process leadership, reviving Intel’s foundry business, and restoring engineering dominance.
It’s capital-heavy, risk-heavy, and ambition-heavy — exactly the kind of moonshot that could put Intel back in the driver’s seat. If successful, Intel would regain pricing power, margins, and strategic relevance in an age when chips are national currency. If it failed, it would burn cash, patience, and Gelsinger’s credibility. Grove would have respected the audacity.
Craig Barrett: Cold-Blooded Financial Reality
Barrett skipped the romance. He called for a $40 billion cash infusion to shore up fabs and stay in the game. No inspirational slogans, just a price tag. Investors like the clarity; employees hear the sound of the axe. Barrett’s message is simple: leadership in semis is for those who can pay for it — now. It’s Grove’s paranoia, but with a banker’s spreadsheet instead of an engineer’s schematic.
Lip-Bu Tan: Partnership, Pragmatism, and a New Narrative
Lip-Bu Tan brings the ecosystem playbook — alliances, restructuring, and customer-centric design. His model trims capital risk by leveraging partners, potentially speeding revenue wins and easing geopolitical friction.
However, the tradeoff is less control over cutting-edge manufacturing. For employees, it’s a gentler onboarding of change; for customers, more flexibility; for purists, a worry that Intel could drift into becoming “just another chip designer.”
Grove might have admired the pragmatism, but he’d have warned: Partnerships are fine — as long as you own the crown jewels.
Impact on Stakeholders
Investors: Barrett’s math is blunt but believable. Gelsinger’s moonshot could deliver outsized returns — or crater. Tan’s method is the safest in cash terms but risks slower market dominance.
Employees: Gelsinger’s rallying cry fired up engineers, but repeated delays dulled the shine. Barrett’s fiscal truth could trigger cuts. Tan’s approach may keep morale steady, but risks losing the rally-around-the-flag energy.
Customers: All want predictability and capacity. Gelsinger’s path delivers both — if executed. Barrett’s demands could align customer funding with fab output. Tan’s flexibility pleases some but might push others toward bleeding-edge rivals.
Which Vision Would Andy Grove Choose?
Grove lived and died by manufacturing control. His maxim “Only the paranoid survive” wasn’t fear-mongering — it was a blueprint. He’d have backed Gelsinger’s fab-first push but borrowed Barrett’s fiscal discipline. Tan’s alliances would have been a tactic, not the foundation. Grove’s likely verdict: Control the process, control the market. Everything else is leverage, not strategy.
Lessons from IBM’s Louis Gerstner
When Gerstner took IBM from near-death to dominance, he centralized accountability, killed sacred cows, and put customers first. Intel could take the same medicine: focus on what customers will pay for, kill underperforming product lines, and align the entire org to execution. But fabs aren’t services — they’re physics, capital, and time — so IBM’s playbook is a guide, not a guarantee.
Intel’s Best-of-All-Worlds Strategy
Intel’s winning move isn’t pure Gelsinger, pure Barrett, or pure Tan. It’s a hybrid:
- Own the strategic nodes that define platform leadership
- Use Barrett-style transparent funding models to secure investor and customer buy-in
- Apply Gerstner’s organizational discipline to remove silos and enforce accountability
- Deploy Tan-style partnerships tactically for non-core or mid-tier manufacturing
This formula keeps the Grove doctrine — own the crown jewels — while recognizing the realities of 2025’s semiconductor economy.
Wrapping Up
Tan’s international partnerships already invite political scrutiny. Execution failures on critical nodes could quickly sink the hybrid model — and investor patience, once burned, rarely returns.
Intel’s path forward isn’t a single vision — it’s the discipline to merge the best of all three. Grove would have kept fabs under his thumb, Barrett would have gotten the money, and Tan would have smoothed the partnerships.
The company’s future depends on doing all three at once — fast. If Intel nails it, it can once again dictate the rules of computing’s next decade. If not, others will write the future, and Intel will just be a footnote.
HP Omen 45L Gaming Desktop PC
As a long-time PC enthusiast who religiously builds my own rigs, it takes something truly special for a pre-built desktop to turn my head. The new HP Omen 45L hasn’t just turned my head; it has made me seriously reconsider my DIY loyalty.
Image Credit: HP
Although its approximately $4,500 price would give some pause, its design and performance make it worth the price of admission, particularly for those who need to push the performance envelope. While the promise of extreme performance from components like the AMD Ryzen 9950X3D and the mighty Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 is enticing, it’s the brilliant thermal engineering that truly sets this machine apart.
The star of the show is HP’s patented Omen Cryo Chamber — a genuine masterstroke of design. Instead of mounting the CPU’s liquid cooler radiator inside the main chassis where it would be forced to use warm internal air, HP has elevated it into a separate, isolated compartment at the top of the case. This allows the radiator to draw in cool, fresh ambient air directly from the outside.
The thermal improvement under full load isn’t just marketing hype; it delivers significantly lower CPU temperatures, sustained boost clocks, quieter operation, and longer component lifespan — a challenge even many custom builds struggle to match.
This intelligent cooling provides the perfect foundation for the high-end CPU and GPU within. Powered by a new 1200W PSU, the system is designed to handle overclocked DDR5 memory and push its components to their limits without breaking a sweat. The Omen Gaming Hub provides a robust suite of tools for fine-tuning performance, while the clean, angular design with its customizable RGB lighting makes the 45L a true centerpiece.
Crucially, HP hasn’t locked you into a proprietary ecosystem. It built the Omen 45L with industry-standard parts, boasts excellent, clean cable routing, and features a tool-less entry design that invites future upgrades. This respect for the user is what seals the deal. My only requested modification would be a vertical mount option to showcase the impressive RTX graphics card.
While the satisfaction of building a PC is unique, the HP Omen 45L’s thoughtful engineering, innovative cooling, and commitment to upgradability are undeniable. Backed by HP’s reputation for quality, this would top my list if I were buying a pre-built desktop today — making it my Product of the Week.