Sachin Katti, the exec Intel promoted to chief technology and AI officer in April, will leave the x86 giant to join OpenAI after just six months in the job.<\/p>\n
Katti was one of new Intel CEO Lip Bu Tan’s early appointments when he took Chipzilla’s big chait in March.<\/p>\n
News of Katti\u2019s departure seems to have played out on X, where OpenAI president and co-founder Greg Brockman welcomed<\/a> the former Intel exec to the AI upstart.<\/p>\n Katti replied<\/a> with a post in which he declared himself \u201cExcited for the opportunity to work with\u201d Brockman, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and others at the company \u201con building out the compute infrastructure for AGI!\u201d He also said he\u2019s very grateful for the tremendous opportunity and experience at Intel over the last 4 years leading networking, edge computing and AI,\u201d adding it was the \u201cPrivilege of a lifetime to have worked closely with\u201d Intel CEO Lip Bu Tan, past CEO Pat Gelsinger, and Intel\u2019s edge and networking boss Nick McKeown.<\/p>\n Lip Bu Tan has said he will add leadership of Intel\u2019s AI efforts to his role.<\/p>\n Katti\u2019s departure is a terrible look for Intel, which has struggled to develop competitive AI accelerators to match those from established rivals Nvidia and AMD. Intel is also arguably behind hyperscalers like Google and AWS that developed their own AI silicon and probably trails Broadcom\u2019s ability to design AI hardware \u2013 a capability OpenAI apparently<\/a> rates so highly it tapped the firm to build its own custom accelerators.<\/p>\n Nor has Chipzilla proven it\u2019s up to the task of making sophisticated AI semiconductors in its foundries, which are yet to secure a major AI customer.<\/p>\n OpenAI also has plenty to prove. The company appears<\/a> to be losing billions each quarter but has committed to spending many tens of billions on projects including giant datacenter builds, creating a consumer AI device, and developing artificial general intelligence \u2013 machines with powers of cognition superior to humans \u2013 an effort Katti mentioned as a factor motivating his move from Intel.<\/p>\n