Brian Krzanich

Brian Krzanich
Born	Brian Matthew Krzanich 1960-05-09May 9, 1960 (age 66) Santa Clara County, California, U.S.
Nationality	American
Education	San Jose State University (B.S.)
Alma mater	San Jose State University
Occupation	Business executive, engineer
Years active	1982-present
Employer	Intel (1982-2018) CDK Global (2018-2022) Cerence (2024-present)
Title	Chief executive officer
Term	2013-2018
Predecessor	Paul Otellini
Successor	Bob Swan
Known for	CEO of Intel Acquisitions of Altera and Mobileye Intel's 10 nm manufacturing delays
Spouse	Brandee Krzanich (m. 1998)
Children	2

Brian Matthew Krzanich (born May 9, 1960) is an American engineer and business executive who served as chief executive officer of Intel from May 2013 to June 2018. He joined Intel as a process engineer in 1982 and spent his career in the company's manufacturing organisation before becoming chief operating officer and then chief executive.

As chief executive Krzanich attempted to reduce Intel's dependence on personal computer processors, acquiring Altera and Mobileye and investing in artificial intelligence, autonomous driving and connectivity. His tenure also saw Intel exit the mobile chip market and encounter extended delays in moving to a 10-nanometre manufacturing process, which ended the company's long-held lead in semiconductor fabrication and allowed competitors to take market share. He resigned in June 2018 after an investigation established that he had been in a past consensual relationship with an employee, contrary to company policy.

Early life and education

Krzanich is from Santa Clara County, California, the area that became the centre of the American semiconductor industry. He graduated from San Jose State University in 1982 with a bachelor's degree in chemistry.

Career

Manufacturing career at Intel

Krzanich joined Intel in 1982 as a process engineer at the company's chip fabrication plant in New Mexico. He spent the following quarter century in manufacturing, a career path that distinguished him from predecessors who had come through engineering design or finance.

In 1996 he became manager of a fabrication plant in Chandler, Arizona, and subsequently supervised assembly and test facilities and a plant in Massachusetts. In 2007 he took responsibility for Intel's factories and supply chain worldwide.

While leading the supply chain he directed an effort to remove conflict minerals from Intel's products, sourcing tantalum, tin, tungsten and gold outside the conflict-affected areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Intel stated that its microprocessors were conflict-free by 2014 and all its products by 2016. Krzanich described the issue as personally important and appeared in the documentary film Merci Congo (2016).

In January 2012 he was promoted to chief operating officer, a role in which he also led Intel's strategy in China.

Chief executive of Intel

Krzanich became chief executive in May 2013, succeeding Paul Otellini. He took charge as the personal computer market, which generated most of Intel's revenue, entered a period of decline, and as smartphones and tablets built on competing architectures took an increasing share of computing.

Diversification strategy

Krzanich set out to reduce Intel's dependence on PC processors by extending the company into adjacent areas: data centre computing, 5G wireless networks, artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, drones, wearables and memory.

He pursued this substantially through acquisition. Intel bought Altera, the programmable logic device maker, in 2015 for approximately $16.7 billion. In 2016 it acquired Nervana Systems and Movidius, both in machine learning and computer vision. In 2017 it acquired Mobileye, the Israeli developer of driver assistance and autonomous driving systems, for approximately $15.3 billion, the largest acquisition of an Israeli technology company at that time.

Intel also invested in memory technology, introducing 3D XPoint in partnership with Micron, and in modem chips supplied to smartphone manufacturers.

Exit from mobile

Intel had spent several years and substantial sums attempting to establish its architecture in smartphones and tablets, including subsidies paid to tablet manufacturers to use its chips. In April 2016 Krzanich cancelled the remaining mobile processor projects and announced a restructuring involving approximately 12,000 job reductions, around 11 percent of the workforce, redirecting resources toward data centre and connected device businesses.

The decision acknowledged that Intel had failed to gain a durable position in mobile computing.

Manufacturing difficulties

Intel's competitive position had rested for decades on leading the industry in semiconductor process technology. Under Krzanich the company set ambitious targets for its 10-nanometre process and encountered repeated difficulties in achieving acceptable manufacturing yields.

The process, originally scheduled for volume production in 2016, was delayed repeatedly and did not ship in significant volume until after his departure. During the delay TSMC and Samsung advanced their own processes, ending Intel's manufacturing lead. AMD, which manufactured through TSMC, gained substantial share in both desktop and server processors in the years that followed.

The 10-nanometre delay is generally regarded as the most consequential development of Krzanich's tenure, and its causes have been attributed in part to targeting an unusually large density improvement in a single process generation.

Diversity initiative

In January 2015 Krzanich announced a $300 million Diversity in Technology initiative, with a stated goal of achieving full representation of women and under-represented minorities in Intel's United States workforce by 2020. The programme funded engineering scholarships at historically black colleges and universities, supported women in professional gaming, and sponsored students to attend game developer conferences with the International Game Developers Association. Intel also ran a campaign called Hack Harassment addressing online abuse.

The scale of the commitment was among the largest by a technology company at the time, and Intel published annual data on its progress.

Public and political positions

In January 2017 Krzanich publicly opposed Executive Order 13769, which restricted entry to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim countries. The following month he appeared with President Donald Trump at the White House to announce a $7 billion investment in a new factory in Chandler, Arizona, one day after Intel and other companies had told a court that they considered the immigration order unconstitutional. The plant was not completed on the announced timetable.

In August 2017 Krzanich became the third executive within 24 hours to resign from the President's American Manufacturing Council following the president's response to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, after Kenneth Frazier of Merck & Co. and Kevin Plank of Under Armour. He wrote that promoting American manufacturing should not be a political issue. He joined other technology executives in calling for legal protection for recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals after the programme was rescinded in September 2017.

Intel increased personal security spending for Krzanich and colleagues in response to threats received in connection with his political positions and the company's diversity programmes.

Resignation

In June 2018 Intel investigated a report from an employee that Krzanich had been involved in a consensual relationship with a subordinate. Press accounts indicated that the relationship had begun before Intel adopted its non-fraternisation policy and had ended several years before the investigation.

Intel concluded that the relationship violated the policy, which applies to all managers, and Krzanich resigned on June 21, 2018. Chief financial officer Bob Swan was appointed interim chief executive and subsequently made permanent.

CDK Global and Cerence

On November 7, 2018, Krzanich was appointed chief executive officer and president of CDK Global, a provider of software to automotive dealerships, succeeding Brian MacDonald. He stepped down in July 2022, when MacDonald returned as acting president and chief executive.

In October 2024 Krzanich was appointed chief executive officer of Cerence, a company developing voice and artificial intelligence systems for vehicles.

Board memberships

Krzanich has served on the boards of Deere & Company and the Semiconductor Industry Association, and on the Drone Advisory Committee advising the Federal Aviation Administration.

Business philosophy and management style

Krzanich's background in manufacturing shaped his approach. He emphasised operational execution and was comfortable making large capital commitments to fabrication capacity, the traditional basis of Intel's advantage.

His strategic judgement was that Intel could not remain dependent on personal computers and should extend into markets where computing was expanding, a diagnosis widely shared. The execution was contested. Critics argued that the acquisitions were expensive relative to the revenue they generated and that management attention directed toward new markets came at the expense of the manufacturing process development on which the core business depended.

He was also unusually public for an Intel chief executive on social and political questions, both through the diversity initiative and through his positions on immigration and on the Charlottesville response.

Controversies

Stock sale before disclosure of security vulnerabilities

In November 2017 Krzanich exercised stock options and sold Intel shares worth approximately $24 million. Intel had by then been informed of the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, fundamental flaws affecting processors sold over the previous decade, which became public in January 2018.

When the timing became known it was widely questioned. Intel stated that the sale was made under a pre-arranged trading plan and was unrelated to the vulnerabilities. Critics noted that the plan had been adopted in October 2017, after the company learned of the flaws. The sale left Krzanich holding 250,000 shares, the minimum permitted under his employment agreement and approximately half the 495,000 shares he had held beforehand.

The Chandler factory announcement

The February 2017 White House appearance announcing a $7 billion Arizona investment drew criticism both for its timing, one day after Intel had joined a legal filing against the administration's immigration order, and because the facility was not built on the announced schedule. Intel later completed investment at the site.

Reported political fundraiser

In June 2016 Krzanich cancelled an event at his home that The New York Times reported was to be a fundraiser supporting Donald Trump, then the presumptive Republican nominee. Intel described the event as intended to be an exchange of views. Commentators noted the tension with the company's positions on immigration reform and its diversity programme, and with its commercial interests in China. Krzanich subsequently said he would not endorse a candidate in the 2016 election.

Relationship with an employee

The relationship that led to his resignation was consensual and, according to press accounts, had ended several years earlier and begun before the policy prohibiting it was adopted. Intel applied the policy without exception for seniority, a decision that drew comment as an example of uniform enforcement of conduct rules at the most senior level.

Personal life

Krzanich has been married to Brandee Krzanich since 1998. They have two daughters, with whom he has attended hackathons. He has lived in Atherton, California.

Legacy

Krzanich's tenure is generally assessed as a period in which Intel correctly identified the strategic problem it faced and failed to solve it. The diversification into artificial intelligence, autonomous driving and programmable logic reflected an accurate reading of where computing demand was moving, and Mobileye in particular became a substantial business, later listed separately.

The manufacturing delay proved more consequential than the diversification. Intel's process leadership had underwritten its position for decades, and losing it during his tenure allowed competitors to establish positions that persisted well beyond his departure. Subsequent Intel leadership has treated recovering process leadership as the company's central objective.

The $300 million diversity commitment remains among the larger such programmes undertaken by a technology company, and Intel's practice of publishing detailed workforce data influenced disclosure elsewhere in the industry.

External links

• Intel Newsroom