Intel Says Former Co-CEO Johnston Holthaus to Depart — 2nd Update

By Kelly Cloonan

Intel said its former co-chief executive is leaving the company and the chip company also said it made a number of new appointments as it seeks to boost its core product business.

The company said Monday that Michelle Johnston Holthaus has resigned from her role as chief executive of Intel Products, where she was responsible for the team encompassing the Santa Clara, Calif., company's client-computing group, data-center and artificial-intelligence group and network and edge group.

Johnston Holthaus resigned for "good reason," Intel said, a process that follows a material reduction in titles, duties, responsibilities, salary or target annual bonus, according to her offer letter from February. She will remain employed in a non-executive role through March 1 to ensure a smooth transition, the company said.

Johnston Holthaus held several senior leadership roles during her more than three decades at the company, including several months as interim co-CEO through March of this year.

Intel also said Naga Chandrasekaran, executive vice president and chief technology and operations officer of Intel Foundry, would expand his role to include Foundry Services. The expanded role aims to create a more integrated structure spanning technology development, manufacturing and go-to-market functions, the company said.

The company also named Kevork Kechichian to lead its data center business across cloud and enterprise, including the Intel Xeon processor family.

Kechichian joins Intel from Arm Holdings, where he was most recently executive vice president of engineering. He previously held engineering roles at NXP Semiconductors and Qualcomm.

The company also named longtime employee Jim Johnson as senior vice president and general manager of its client-computing group after he held the position on an interim basis.

Johnson will lead Intel's computing-solutions efforts and aim to foster growth across its global personal-computer and edge ecosystems, the company said. He previously held various engineering and leadership roles including in the technology and manufacturing group and networking and communications group.

Intel also said it is establishing a new central engineering group led by Srinivasan Iyengar.

Iyengar, a senior vice president and fellow, will lead horizontal engineering functions and build a new custom silicon business to serve a broad range of external customers, the company said. Iyengar joined Intel in June from Cadence Design Systems, where he led global silicon engineering.

Kechichian, Johnson and Iyengar will report directly to CEO Lip-Bu Tan. The appointments aim to support Intel's strategy to strengthen its core product business and foster a culture of engineering across the business, the company said.

The leadership changes come weeks after the U.S. government said it is taking a 10% stake in the troubled chip maker, converting $8.9 billion in grants promised to Intel as part of the 2022 Chips Act. The deal marked a stunning turnaround after President Trump called for CEO Tan to be fired for his ties to China.

Write to Kelly Cloonan at kelly.cloonan@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 08, 2025 18:08 ET (22:08 GMT)