Intel Hires Away Key Qualcomm Executive

Well, this one is surprising: Intel announced that it has hired Alex Katouzian away from Qualcomm. Katouzian is one of the smartest and most capable tech industry executives I’ve met, but this is an unexpected change. He’s one of the good guys.

“AI is creating unprecedented opportunities at the edge, driving a sea change in client computing and physical AI systems,” Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan says. “Alex brings deep technical expertise, strong operational discipline, and decades of experience building and scaling global compute platforms. He is the right leader to help us reimagine client computing beyond the traditional PC and align this future with the next wave of growth in physical AI.”

At Qualcomm, Katouzian was an executive vice president and group general manager of mobile, compute, and extended reality (XR), the team responsible for the Snapdragon X chip for PCs, which has embarrassed Intel and its woeful x86 platform for the past few years. At Intel, he will assume the role of executive vice president and general manager of Client Computing & Physical AI. So among other things, he’s now in a leadership position in the team building x86 chips.

“Intel is creating the foundation for AI-driven transformation, from leading in AI PCs, to scaling AI inference at the edge, and accelerating the future of physical AI systems,” Katouzian says. “I’m excited to join Lip-Bu and the Intel team at this critical moment to help scale innovation and deliver the next generation of computing experiences.”

Katouzian will join Intel later in May. I wish him the best of luck.