Article 5: The Visionary's Blind Spot: How Brian Krzanich Saw the Future But Fumbled the Present
By Michael Apemah
In our last piece, we reframed the Bob Swan era as a necessary, painful reckoning. But every reckoning has its roots. The crisis of honesty that Swan had to manage was born from a culture that had begun to slowly drift away from its foundational truths under his predecessor, Brian Krzanich.
The story of BK is the ultimate paradox. He was a visionary, a manufacturing veteran who correctly identified the future pillars of growth—data centers, AI, cloud, and IoT—long before they became conventional wisdom. Yet, it was on his watch that the very engine of Intel’s dominance, its legendary manufacturing machine, began to sputter and seize. He saw the next war with perfect clarity but failed to maintain the home fortress.
The “Virtuous Cycle of Growth” and the Stuttering Engine
BK took the helm at a time of anxiety. The PC market, Intel’s cash cow, was in decline. His grand strategy was the “virtuous cycle of growth,” a plan to use Intel’s strengths to push into new, expanding markets. This vision led to a flurry of brilliant acquisitions: Altera for programmable chips, Movidius for computer vision, and Nervana for AI. On paper, it was the right move.
But as he was acquiring these new capabilities, the core engine was showing signs of trouble. From my vantage point as a process engineer on the 22nm node, the transition to 14nm felt different. The cadence was slower. The early yields on products like Broadwell were not hitting the same aggressive ramp we were used to. This initial stutter evolved into the infamous “14nm+++” era, a necessary but ultimately embarrassing series of product iterations to cover for the fact that the next node, 10nm, was in serious trouble.
A Culture of Obfuscation
This is where the culture began to shift. The famed transparency of the Grove era was replaced by a kind of strategic obfuscation. The messaging we heard internally and that was shared externally was designed to project strength, even when the reality was far more complex.
On Process Delays: When rumors swirled that competitors like IBM were hitting 7nm in the lab, the official line, as delivered by our then-heads of Technology and Manufacturing, was that lab work and high-volume manufacturing (HVM) were not the same. While true, it deflected from the core issue of our own delays. The prevailing message became: “Intel sells products, not process.” It was a clever line, but it tacitly admitted we could no longer lead on process alone.
On Talent Drain: As the pressure to fix 10nm mounted, burnout in the Technology Development (TD) groups in Oregon was a real concern. When questions were raised about losing key talent, the response was a statistically correct but emotionally tone-deaf statement that fab attrition rates were in line with other divisions. It missed the point that losing a 20-year veteran of process development was not the same as losing a junior marketing manager.
On the 10nm Disaster: The full extent of the 10nm yield issues was a closely guarded secret. For those of us on the ground without the big picture, it was hard to grasp the scale of the crisis. The business was still making money, and the messaging was always optimistic. It was this lack of transparency that created the cultural rot that Bob Swan would later have to excise with his “Truth and Transparency” initiative. Eventually, Sohail Ahmed, the then-head of Technology and Manufacturing “retired”, the first major casualty of the process collapse.
The Right Hires, The Wrong Time
To his credit, BK knew he had a problem. He made a massive hire, bringing in Dr. Murthy Renduchintala from Qualcomm to be a new CTO and bring a much-needed “outside-in” perspective. It was Murthy who coined the now-famous mantra that would echo through the next two CEO tenures: “Fix 10nm, parity at 7nm, lead with 5nm.” He was brilliant, but he wasn’t a silicon process magician. He couldn’t single-handedly fix a decade of complex, intertwined technical issues.
BK succeeded Paul Otellini after a contentious political battle for the top job. Otellini, famous for passing on the opportunity to put Intel chips in the first iPhone, had left the company in a strong financial position but perhaps vulnerable to the mobile revolution. BK, the manufacturing guy, was seen as the one to get Intel’s technical mojo back.
Instead, his legacy is one of a tragic paradox. He bought the right companies, identified the right markets, and hired key talent. But he presided over the decay of the one thing that made Intel “Intel.” His tenure ended abruptly due to a personal scandal, leaving his successor, Bob Swan, to face the consequences of a brilliant vision undermined by a catastrophic failure in execution.
This five-part saga—from the visionary’s blind spot to the accountant’s reckoning to the engineer’s crusade and the new, fragile alliances—is the story of the “Second Founding of Intel.” It is a story of failure, resilience, and a titan’s long, hard climb back to the summit.