Intel Hit By AI Brain Drain As Top Execs Depart For Rivals: Sachin Katti Joins OpenAI After Saurabh Kulkarni's Jump To AMD

• Following the departure of AI head Sachin Katti, CEO Lip-Bu Tan will lead the company’s AI initiatives. 
• After years of underperformance and lagging behind more nimble peers, Intel began charting a recovery course this year under its new CEO.
• Reflecting the various initiatives, Intel’s stock has nearly doubled this year.

Intel is facing back-to-back losses of key artificial intelligence (AI) personnel, casting a cloud over its efforts to catch up with peers. Sachin Katti, who served as Chief Technology & AI Officer at Intel, announced his move to Sam Altman’s OpenAI via a social media post late Tuesday.

After years of underperformance and lagging behind more nimble peers, Intel began to chart a recovery course this year under new CEO Lip-Bu Tan. Reflecting the restructuring initiatives and financing deals, Intel stock has gained about 92% this year, outperforming the broader market, the tech sector, and the semiconductor industry.

AI Pushback For Intel?

Katti, a Stanford academician, served Intel in various capacities for four years. Responding to OpenAI president Greg Brockman’s post welcoming him, Katti said he was excited to work with Altman, Brockman, and the OpenAI team on building the compute infrastructure for artificial general intelligence (AGI).

Thanking Intel, Katti said, “Very grateful for the tremendous opportunity and experience at Intel over the last 4 years leading networking, edge computing and AI.”

Citing a statement from the company, Reuters said Tan would now lead Intel’s AI efforts. “We thank Sachin for his contributions and wish him all the best. Lip-Bu will lead the AI and Advanced Technologies Groups, working closely with the team,” he reportedly said.

Katti’s departure comes close on the heels of Intel’s Corporate Vice President, Datacenter GPU Product Management, Saurabh Kulkarni, announcing his departure from the company after a two-year stint.  Previously, he worked as VP, AI Systems Design at Intel.

Updating the career shift on LinkedIn, Kulkarni said, “I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as Corporate Vice President, Datacenter GPU Product Management at AMD!”

Exec Exodus, A Red Flag?

Intel’s focus during the early part of its restructuring has been to reduce costs by laying off employees and scaling back its foundry plans. At the same time, Tan underscored the importance of making significant inroads into AI on the third-quarter earnings call held in late October.

“We are still in the early stage of AI revolution, and I believe Intel can and will play a much more significant role as we transform the company,” the top brass said, according to the transcript from Koyfin. He noted that AI was driving near-term upside to the company's business and that it provides a strong foundation for sustainable long-term growth. 

Tan also pointed to Intel’s partnership with Nvidia. “We are joining forces to create a new class of products and experience spanning multiple generations that accelerate the adoption of AI for the hyperscale, enterprise and consumer markets,” he said. Tan pledged to make Inel a compute platform of choice for AI inference and said the company will continue to deliver AI capabilities to Xeon, AI PCs, Arc, GPUs and its open software stack.

Notably, AI was mentioned 48 times on Intel’s earnings call.

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