There are reasons why CEOs get paid a lot. One of them is that they are responsible for making decisions that can make or break a company.
Sadly, it appears something of that sort might be happening to Intel. After it was reported earlier this week that Intel will layoff 15% of its workforce, reports are coming out that, in 2017 and 2018, Intel decided to pass on an investment opportunity: $1 billion for a 15% stake in OpenAI.
Then-CEO Bob Swan reportedly “did not think generative AI models would make it to market in the near future and thus repay the chipmaker’s investment.” OpenAI released ChatGPT in late 2022.
OpenAI didn’t comment on the Reuters news report. The report added: “OpenAI was interested in an investment from Intel because it would have reduced their reliance on Nvidia’s chips and allowed the startup to build its own infrastructure, two of the people said. The deal also fell through because Intel’s data center unit did not want to make products at cost, the people added.”
If computing will be increasingly AI-driven, using GPU chips, then this decision to forgo an investment in OpenAI was a blunder of enormous proportions.