Tell the truth? Chen Liwu said frankly that Intel “can’t even rank in the top 10 companies”: Nvidia is really too strong

Intel CEO Chen Liwu admitted to employees that the company is not even among the top ten semiconductor companies in the world. (Data photo, provided by Intel)

Intel used to be the global chip hegemon, but in recent years, in addition to the slump of the foundry business, it has missed the wave of AI, resulting in a wider gap with its rivals. The foreign media “The Oregonian” reported that Intel CEO Chen Liwu admitted to employees that the company is not even ranked among the top ten semiconductor companies in the world, especially in AI training, “Nvidia is too strong”.

According to the report, Chen Liwu said in an internal live broadcast for employees around the world, “20 or 30 years ago, we were indeed leaders, but now the world has changed. We’re not even among the top 10 semiconductor companies in the world.”

Chen Liwu bluntly said that customers gave Intel a failing evaluation, and the company is far behind the industry leader Nvidia in the development of AI training technology, and it is difficult to catch up. He described Intel’s transformation as a marathon, and that the layoffs launched this week are designed to make Intel more agile and swift like Nvidia, Broadcom and AMD, “and we have to be humble.”

The Oregonian confirmed Chen’s statement to Intel, and the spokesperson clarified that Chen’s “top 10” statement refers to market capitalization, not technology leadership. However, the report pointed out that during the 20-minute conversation, Chen himself never mentioned market capitalization, and he talked about the topic of “Big 10 companies” as a response to a question about Intel’s corporate culture.

The report mentions that in fact, the status of Intel’s chip industry has indeed declined seriously, and the current market value is about $100 billion, only half of what it was 18 months ago; In contrast, Nvidia once broke through the $4 trillion market capitalization mark this week, becoming the first company in history to reach this scale. Chen Liwu launched a major layoff plan, saying that “we still have a lot of work to do”, Intel’s market share in the data center market has been seriously lost, and although the PC business has “improved slightly”, the company must strengthen its architecture to meet the needs of high-end computing.

According to the report, the rise of AI technology has worsened Intel’s predicament. At present, AI training relies on NVIDIA’s GPUs, and Intel itself does not have high-end GPU products that can compete with it, and it has been almost marginalized in this wave of AI. Nvidia’s market position is too strong.”

Chen Liwu revealed that Intel will instead focus on “edge AI”, that is, let AI computing power be directly executed on personal computers and terminal devices, rather than concentrated in large data centers, and also hopes to continue to explore the emerging field of “agentic AI”, that is, AI can operate independently without continuous instructions from humans, “This is an emerging field with great potential, and we must grasp it.”