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Signature Event
Patrick Gelsinger
Chief Executive Officer
Intel Corporation
David M. Rubenstein
Chairman
The Economic Club of Washington, D.C.
Renaissance Washington, D.C. Downtown Hotel
Washington, D.C.
Thursday, December 9, 2021
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Signature Event
Patrick Gelsinger
Chief Executive Officer
Intel Corporation
David M. Rubenstein
Chairman
The Economic Club of Washington, D.C.
Renaissance Washington, D.C. Downtown Hotel
Washington, D.C.
Thursday, December 9 , 2021
MR. RUBENSTEIN: OK. So, we have the CEO of Intel, Patrick Gelsinger. Let me give a brief introduction to Patrick. He is from the Pennsylvania area. Finished high school there and then went across the country and joined Intel right after graduating from high school. And then got a
- while he was working at Intel – got an undergraduate degree from Santa Clara in electrical engineering, then got a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from Stanford. And then stayed at Intel to become the youngest vice president at Intel, and also the first chief technology officer of Intel. And while there, designed one of their most famous microprocessors. And he was there for 30 years, and then was recruited away to become the president and chief operating officer of EMC. Did that for a number of years. And then he became, in 2012, the CEO of VMware, where he tripled the revenues and tripled market value. And then was recruited back to be the CEO of Intel in February of this year. And Intel, as you probably know, is one of the legendary semiconductor companies; is a company with about 110,000 employees. It has a market capitalization now of about $ billion and a revenue of about $77-78 billion, something like that. PATRICK GELSINGER: Close enough. [Laughs.] MR. RUBENSTEIN: OK. So, we keep reading about semiconductor shortages. Why all of a sudden? Is it because of COVID? Why are we having a hard time getting semiconductors into this country? MR. GELSINGER: Yeah. What’s happened is COVID really was the impetus where all of a sudden, you know, the demand – you know, in the semiconductor industry, about a half a trillion dollars and it was growing about 5 percent per year. COVID drove that to 20-plus percent per year, which on an industry that size, wow, right? But supply chains got disrupted, so supply went negative. And all of a sudden what was probably going to be a little bit of a shortage became a gulf. And now every industry has been disrupted. Auto industries, hey, I can’t ship F-150s because of a $2 chip. You know, my – you know, my $10 billion auto – I mean, train project is stopped because of a few chips. You know, all of a sudden, it’s become a crisis across every industry. And every one of us – you know, never has semiconductors been as sexy, and cool and important as it is now. MR. RUBENSTEIN: OK. Well, let’s go back for a moment, for people who may not be as technologically savvy as I am. [Laughter.] So, what actually is a semiconductor? And who invented that? MR. GELSINGER: Yeah, so the idea of semiconductors, right, is this ability to essentially do chips. You know, little transistors turning on and off. And you put them together and it becomes microprocessors and memories that store things. And this idea was actually emanated out of Bell Labs. But Intel was really one of the key companies to push this forward. Fifty years ago, last month we celebrated the microprocessor. And this was the idea that we could actually create a programmable thing that did what we told it to do. And we could start writing software for it. And rather than these big computers like IBM mainframes, all of a
their shores. And it was never, like, Congress voted let’s get rid of the dirty semiconductor industry. It’s that the congresses of China, Korea, Taiwan, Japan said: Let’s bring this industry to our shores. And essentially, it’s 30 to 50 percent cheaper if I were running my manufacturing in those locations than if I was doing it in the U.S. MR. RUBENSTEIN: So, a chip is made of silicon. MR. GELSINGER: Silicon and a lot of other elements – MR. RUBENSTEIN: Where does silicon come from? MR. GELSINGER: Silicon, sand, right? MR. RUBENSTEIN: Sand, so – MR. GELSINGER: The most prevalent material on Earth is the magic, right, of silicon, right? You can add all these different elements of the periodic table. You can get it to do all these magic things. It was like God’s gift to the digital age, silicon. MR. RUBENSTEIN: So, in this iPhone, how many silicon chips are there, probably? MR. GELSINGER: Oh, 100 or so. MR. RUBENSTEIN: Hundred? And what about in an average automobile? How many chips? MR. GELSINGER: You know, the good ones are a few hundred. The not-so-good- designed ones are maybe 1,000. MR. RUBENSTEIN: OK. And in the electric cars, they have 2,000 or something? MR. GELSINGER: Yeah, more. And today – you know, a premium car today, about 4 percent of the billing materials of a premium car today is semiconductor chips. And all the shortages are, you know, for that 4 percent. Estimates – and I gave a big speech on this at the Munich auto show a couple of months ago – that by 2030, because of electrification and autonomous vehicles, that number is expected to be 20 percent, right? So essentially your car is becoming a computer with tires, 5X the amount of semiconductor products will be part of that, of the total billing materials, by 2030. MR. RUBENSTEIN: OK. So, if China were to invade Taiwan, which some people think might happen at some point, would that be bad for the silicon chip world, because so many chips are being made in Taiwan? MR. GELSINGER: Yeah. That would be very devastating to the world’s supply chains. And, you know, clearly, you know, part of our message, part of my message, has been that we
need a more balanced geographically and a more resilient supply chain. And that’s just been so emphasized through the COVID shortages. MR. RUBENSTEIN: Now, the largest semiconductor company in the world now, is that Taiwan Semiconductor? MR. GELSINGER: No. The largest one is Samsung in Korea. And the second-largest is Intel. And third-largest is TSMC in Taiwan. MR. RUBENSTEIN: OK. And how did they become so big in Taiwan? Are they really good at making chips, or what – MR. GELSINGER: You know, they created the new business model, called the foundry. They said, we’re not going to design chips. We’re just going to manufacture them for everybody else. So, Morris Chang, you know, the leader. You know, he had this – you know, he’s sort of like the Fred Smith of FedEx. You know, he had this idea, right, that he drove very aggressively. And, you know, I’ll say in Taiwanese history, the most important person, Chiang Kai-shek. The second-most important person, Morris Chang. You know, when he drove this aggressively, he got very strong support, you know, from the Taiwan government. The foundry industry, they perfected that business model. And now, you know, Apple, and NVIDIA, and, you know, many other companies who don’t manufacture their chips, they use TSMC to be their manufacturing partner. MR. RUBENSTEIN: Well, let’s talk about that. Intel manufactures chips and you design them. MR. GELSINGER: Yes. MR. RUBENSTEIN: Some companies only design them. MR. GELSINGER: Yep. MR. RUBENSTEIN: For the biggest company market cap in the chip world in the United States is NVIDIA, right? With, like, a $700 billion market cap. They only design chips, is that right? MR. GELSINGER: Yes. MR. RUBENSTEIN: Why don’t you just design chips? It’s a better business, isn’t it? MR. GELSINGER: Well, you know, we believe that this idea of being an integrated design and manufacturer can be, and again, will be a superior business model if we execute it well. The world needs multiple foundries. And we’re committed to now – you know, Intel before only designed and manufactured our chips. You know, I’ve changed that strategy, somewhat like Microsoft. When they said, you know, only our software runs? No, we’re going to open up and we’re going to run everything. And I’ve taken a very similar strategy to open up
MR. RUBENSTEIN: Somebody came up with that? OK. So, it’s the CHIPS Act. And then when the CHIPS Act passes, like a $50 billion – MR. GELSINGER: $52 billion. MR. RUBENSTEIN: $52 billion. So, if you build a facility you go before somebody or another and you say, give me some money? MR. GELSINGER: Commerce, yeah. MR. RUBENSTEIN: OK. And so, I now read that Samsung is building a chip facility in Texas. And I think – is the Taiwan Semiconductor’s building one in – MR. GELSINGER: TSMC is building one in Arizona. MR. RUBENSTEIN: In Arizona. So why would they be building them in the United States when it’s cheaper to build them in their own countries? MR. GELSINGER: Yeah. Well, their customers are now saying, hmm, this situation is – you know, geographically – you know, our customers are looking for us to balance our supply chains around the world. You know, we are too concentrated. You know, in Taiwan, major drought issues this past year, right? They’re running into talent limitations. They’re running out of electricity. You know, so they have their own geographic limitations. And their customers are saying: Huh, I want a more balanced supply chain around the world. And the CHIPS Act is, you know, going to be available to them as well. Which we certainly support. We believe it needs to be more beneficial to American companies but, you know, we believe that, hey, a next TSMC or Samsung factory in the U.S. is better than the next one being built in Asia. I fully agree. MR. RUBENSTEIN: You were quoted in the press, maybe misquoted – I know the press sometimes gets things wrong – but – MR. GELSINGER: That’s the only time it’s ever happened. MR. RUBENSTEIN: But it said that you didn’t think that the Taiwanese companies or the Korean companies should get participation in the CHIPS Act if they build something here. Is that correct or not? MR. GELSINGER: I believe they should get supported by the CHIPS Act. I believe American companies with American IP should get more support from the CHIPS Act. But absolutely, we believe the next Asian company building a factory here is better than them building the next one in Asia. You know, and similarly in Europe. You know, we firmly believe there should be a more geographically – [off mic] – supply chain that becomes more resilient. Semiconductors are so important to every aspect of humanity and becoming more important. You know, God decided where the oil reserves are. Let’s put the fabs where we want them,
because the fabs are more important to the next couple of decades than where the oil reserves are. Let’s put them where we want them. MR. RUBENSTEIN: But you still think American companies should get some benefit over what – MR. GELSINGER: Absolutely. MR. RUBENSTEIN: All right. So how would you get a benefit? If they’re going to get support from the CHIPS Act, the Taiwanese companies, how would the American companies get some benefit? MR. GELSINGER: You know, if they get a dollar, I should get more than a dollar. MR. RUBENSTEIN: So, in other words, if they get a billion dollars to build a facility, you should get $2 billion, or something? MR. GELSINGER: Something like that. You know, there clearly should be advantage. And you know, I think that’s politically correct. You know, if I was going to Taiwan, I don’t expect to get treated as good as TSMC does, right? You know, I believe, you know, that’s part of national policy. Industrial policy should clearly be saying: What do we want? Do we want manufacturing in the U.S.? Absolutely. Do we want the intellectual property, R&D, and manufacturing in the U.S.? Even more so. MR. RUBENSTEIN: What about Europe? Are they in the game anymore? MR. GELSINGER: You know, we spent a lot of time in Europe over the last six months as well. And they have, and they’re proposing, the equivalent of the CHIPS Act in Europe. And Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU, you know, Margrethe Vestager, Thierry Breton, you know, two of the most important commissioners on technology issues. They are aggressively creating their CHIPS Act as we speak. And we’ve been engaging with them, because we would hope to expand our footprint not just in the U.S., but Europe as well. MR. RUBENSTEIN: In Asia they don’t need a CHIPS Act, because they’ve had one for a long time. MR. GELSINGER: Yeah, they did theirs two and a half decades ago. MR. RUBENSTEIN: OK. All right. I see. Now, for those who aren’t, again, as technologically savvy as I am, how do you actually design a semiconductor or a chip? I mean, how hard is that? Does it take an hour to do it, or how long does it take? MR. GELSINGER: [Laughs.] You know, a major new microprocessor, you know, one of our high-end chips, is about a four-year project. MR. RUBENSTEIN: Four years?
MR. GELSINGER: Yeah. So, the idea of quantum computing is, you know, the transistor is a binary switch. It’s on or off. It’s one or a zero. It’s called digital logic. Well, quantum logic basically is a different effect. Rather than have an on or off transistor, it’s the quantum effect. And there are certain problems that can be expressed in quantum terms far more effectively than in digital terms. And if we can get a quantum computer to work, those classes of problems will be much more powerfully solved on a quantum computer than on a digital computer. Now, the one that gets everybody excited is security problems, algorithms. Encryption is the one where quantum could, if we get them to be functional, stable, predictable at that level, you know quantum effects probably will allow us to solve encryption problems at, you know, dramatically faster, using quantum effects. There’s also things like medical biological things that are more probabilistic that are probably going to be much more effectively solved using a quantum computer. Today the idea of a qubit versus a transistor, you know, we’re showing small qubit quantum computers today. We could – you know, come to my lab, I’ll show you a qubit in action, right, a real quantum effect. And, you know, my expectation is about 2030 is when we’ll see quantum supremacy. What does that mean? That means that we’ll have a stable, predictable quantum computer that is reliably producing better results than a digital computer would, right, at scale. And that’ll be the first moment that we’re going to say quantum is here. But quantum ain’t going to be anything that you’re using regularly. It’s going to be this special cloud datacenters that you have, because it only needs to operate close to absolute zero. MR. RUBENSTEIN: I have this image in my mind – MR. GELSINGER: So, we just need to put your big, honking refrigerator in your pocket for you to carry it around. And these refrigerators, you know, are about 25-feet large, right, with all these things, to create one little qubit as well. It’s pretty cool stuff. MR. RUBENSTEIN: So, the image I have in my mind is you have a bunch of chip designers sitting there. They’re all Stanford or the equivalent educated. They’re engineers and so forth. And they’re virtually all men. Is that wrong? MR. GELSINGER: You know, at this point, you know, there’s been a lot of emphasis in the industry to improve the diversity. And, you know, I’ve been on this for almost 30 years, that we need to improve the female population. You know, they’re half of humanity. Why don’t we have half of them being engineers, and get the creative? Today the industry’s about 26- 28 percent females. We have set our 2030 goal to be 40 percent, you know, from where we are. Intel’s now about 30 percent. So, we’re driving hard to improve the pipeline of females. Also, there’s under representation in the, you know, African Americans, et cetera. So, it’s been way too white male dominated. We have to drive diversity in this industry significantly. MR. RUBENSTEIN: To get a job at Intel if you’re just graduating from a very good school, what do you have to do? You have to be an engineer? You have to be personable? Don’t wear a tie? Whatever you have – what is it you have to do?
MR. GELSINGER: You have to be a good geek. MR. RUBENSTEIN: Really? OK, so you have to really look weird and – MR. GELSINGER: You don’t have to look weird. But you got to be a geek. And, you know, the people that we’re really looking for would be top engineering talent. Bachelor’s, master’s, you know, Ph.D., people who’ve really excelled in the STEAM/STEM categories. Now, of course, we’re a big company. So, we hire finance people. We have a few marketing people. We have salespeople. You know, and the other thing is we do manufacturing. You know, we have about 40,000 people doing manufacturing. And some of that’s engineering, but a lot of that is technicians. You have operators on the manufacturing line. We train many of those. You know, this is just a tremendously good, clean industry in that regard, where entry- level technicians like me, you know, starting as a farm boy technician, right, and now becoming the CEO of one of the iconic companies of our age, wow. How did that happen? MR. RUBENSTEIN: Well, let’s talk about your farm boy background. You grew up, where? MR. GELSINGER: Pennsylvania, outside of – MR. RUBENSTEIN: In a farm, or really? MR. GELSINGER: Yeah, it was a farm community between Reading and Hershey. If you went halfway, it was Robesonia. We lived five miles outside of Robesonia. So, I said, when you go to nowhere, we were five more miles right. All of my uncles are farmers. I was just back there seeing a number of them. We had, you know, steers. We had horses. We had chickens. We had pigs. We had, you know, corn, wheat, soy – MR. RUBENSTEIN: Is that what – were your parents farmers? Or what were they? MR. GELSINGER: Yeah, my dad was number nine. Part of my reason I’m here is he was number nine of 10. And grandpa helped one through eight buy their own farms. My dad never had his own farm. So, he worked with his siblings. So, he never had his own farm. Had he had his farm, I would be a farmer today. Oldest son, I would go into farming. MR. RUBENSTEIN: So, he worked on a farm, but you didn’t live on a farm. MR. GELSINGER: That’s right. That’s right. MR. RUBENSTEIN: OK. MR. GELSINGER: So, we lived amongst all of our uncles’ farms and, you know, worked there.
MR. GELSINGER: Oh, they were stunning. Yeah, they were just – you know, Andy, intellectual integrity, strategic capacity. You know, seeing him and Bill Gates argue was like a masterpiece, right? You know, these two intellectual giants going head-to-head. You know, Robert Noyce, you know, Nobel Prize winner, integrated circuit. You know, just stunning, you know, creative capacity. Gordon Moore, you know, Moore’s Law. I just interviewed Gordon, you know, 92 years old living in Hawaii. You know, I mean, you know, stunning individuals. And I – MR. RUBENSTEIN: What is Moore’s – for those who don’t know, Moore’s Law is? MR. GELSINGER: Moore’s Law, he predicted the semiconductor industry future, saying that the number of transistors would double every two years, right? And if you do that over a couple of decades, that gets to be a really big number. One-point-two million to 100 billion, right? MR. RUBENSTEIN: So, what’s Gelsinger’s Law? Do you have a law? MR. GELSINGER: Gelsinger’s Law is we’re going to keep doing Moore’s Law. [Laughter.] MR. RUBENSTEIN: OK. All right. I got it. All right. So, let’s talk more about your background. So, you work your way up, you become the youngest vice president, chief technology officer. So, and then you’re there for how many years, 30? MR. GELSINGER: Thirty. MR. RUBENSTEIN: Thirty years. And then you get recruited away. So, was it hard to leave Intel? MR. GELSINGER: Dreadfully hard. You know, and I thought – you know, I had written in my personal mission statement when I was in my mid-20s that I was going to become president and CEO of Intel. And, you know, it was a crazy thing to say. You know, I was this 20 - year-old punk, right? You know, but to me it was sort of, like, you know, I’m going to work to make myself good enough that I could sit in the chair of Andy or Gordon. And so, every time they would say something I’d say, hmm, would I have said that? Could I have said that? You know, it just became this constant sea of do I know enough, have I learned enough, am I good enough? You know, do I, you know, for that journey? So, leaving Intel, you know, I mean, it was multiple years until I got over it. I still did the Intel “bung, ba-dun-dun-dun,” every night, right? You know, it was, like – you know, so very hard. But also, you know, when you’re at a place for 30 years there is no other, right? You don’t know right from wrong. There’s only that approach. And so, leaving Intel was an extraordinary experience to learn a new culture. You know, a sales-oriented culture versus an engineering and manufacturing one. You know, learning the software industry, becoming a CEO.
So now it really is 11 years of, you know, coming back to be the CEO. By the way 11 years is an interesting number to be away from a company. It’s the same amount of time Jobs was away from Apple, right? Almost to the day, right, you know, from my time away from Intel. MR. RUBENSTEIN: So, but one of the things you did while you were away is you ran a company that, I remember, had gone public and got a lot of attention, VMware, when it went public. Later bought by EMC. But what does VMware do? And what did you do that dramatically increased its value? MR. GELSINGER: Yeah. VMware invented this idea of a hypervisor. Another technical term. But it basically makes one hardware computer look like many software computers to applications. So, all of a sudden one server can look like 10 servers. You know, when you walk into a datacenter, I’ll take 10 servers and make them one. Wow, what a value proposition. They perfected that piece of software. And then they parlayed it into a software enterprise business. And when I came in, you know, essentially it was a one-product company. I made it a one-platform company – you know, for networking, for storage, for management and automation. And we tripled the size of the company, more than tripled the market cap. And I made my friend Michael Dell a lot of money. MR. RUBENSTEIN: Michael Dell was the owner of EMC, and in fact he did a leveraged buyout of EMC, which VMware was part of. And you made him, let’s say, $20 billion or so. Does he ever say thank you? MR. GELSINGER: He’s a very thankful guy. MR. RUBENSTEIN: He is? OK. [Laughter.] So, all right. So, you’re running VMware, and then all of a sudden somebody calls you and says: OK, now it’s ready. You can come back and be CEO. Did you say, I don’t want you anymore, I’m very happy at VMware? MR. GELSINGER: Well, it was a little bit different than that, because on Thanksgiving, just a year ago, I got a call, would you join the board of Intel? Hmm. Yeah, so I go to Michael Dell and I said: Michael, what do you think about me joining the board of Intel? And Michael says, hmm, they need help. Go help them. So, I started interviewing for the board. So, I interviewed for the month of December last year to join the board of Intel. I’m learning it, thinking about the strategy. You know, I’ve been away from it for 11 years, and so on. You know, get my own strategic thoughts put together. And then December 23rd, you know, when activists are starting to chew around the edges of Intel and, you know, make some noise. And they said, would you consider being the CEO. Ruined my Christmas holidays, right? [Laughter.] You know, Linda and I. Because it was one of these because it was one of these where, you know, we’d just had our eighth grandchild. You know, life is good. The company’s good. We’re about to take – you know, and spin VMware out of Dell. I wasn’t quite finished, and so on.
MR. RUBENSTEIN: OK. So, most CEOs by the time they get to be CEO, they’re fairly sanitized in terms of talking about their religious faith. And so, you rarely can get a CEO really talking about their religious faith. They kind of avoid it. You’re the opposite. You talk about it a great deal. You’re very involved in Christianity, and very involved in it. And you would say that it’s the most important thing in your life, other than your family, I guess you would say. So, can you explain why it’s so important to you, and how it has helped you be a successful businessperson? MR. GELSINGER: Yeah. First, a little story. So, I joined Intel, walking around the hall, starting to go to school, became a Christian at 18 years old, you know, after I moved to California and really made that, you know, firm religious view and spiritual decision. And then a few months later I felt like God was calling me to become a full-time minister. And I started to argue with God. You know, I don’t want to be a minister. I want to design computers. I love this stuff, and I’m good at it, right? And, you know, finally there’s a story in the Bible, Gideon, right, you know, where he lays a fleece before God. If this happens, you know, I’ll do this. And so, I laid a fleece before God. And the answer that came very clear to me was the workplace is your ministry. Right, and I’m here to be – you know, some became vocational ministers. I am here to be a full-time workplace minister. And, you know, my CEO, right, you know, God and Jesus Christ. And I am going to do everything that I do in the workplace to honor that calling. Now, when you go into the workplace though, particularly now as the CEO, you know, I need to be entirely diverse and inclusive. But I am now so aggressively diverse and inclusive – diversity is easy, right? You just count the noses. One female, a Latino, a Black, you know, so on. OK, boom. Inclusion means do you feel like you are all in when you’re at the table, right? And now I go to the table and I say, I’m a Christian. Let me tell you about it, because I am bringing my whole self to the workplace, and I want you to bring your whole self too. Oh, you’re a Sikh, tell me about that. Oh, you’re Indian? Well, what’s this crazy Diwali thing, anyway? I want to know all about that. You know, and you just start to become aggressively intentionally diverse. And if you’re reserved and saying, oh, I’m not going to talk about anything that’s really important to me. You know, I can talk about the Washington team, and why did you change it from the Redskins anyway, right? Or I can talk about my grandkids. But I can’t talk about the most important thing to me? That’s not inclusive, right? And in this I’ll say, I have become aggressively diverse and inclusive. And as people understand that, and, you know, I’ll say aggressively and intentional about respecting other people’s faith. You know, what’s most important to them. It is game-changing for how you think about that in the workplace. That’s what’s most important to me. I’m proud of it. And I want to know what’s most important to you as well, in addition to getting this next chip done and getting the CHIPS Act approved, and getting it done. And it becomes an outpouring of our philanthropic efforts as well.
MR. RUBENSTEIN: So, one of your sons came to you and said he wanted to be a pastor. You didn’t say, go into private equity, hedge funds, anything like that. You said it’s OK, even though he’s not going to make any money, right? MR. GELSINGER: Yeah. And what I said to him when he laid that out – and he was really looking – and, you know, parents, you have the opportunity to bless your children, you know, to honor them as they are moving into their professional career. And what I said to him, I said: The only currency that matters when we get to heaven is how many lives you have influenced for eternity. And I said, you will influence more lives for eternity than I did. Not only am I proud of you, son, but I couldn’t imagine you picking a better career profession than becoming a minister. MR. RUBENSTEIN: So other than religion, outside of your work, you have some philanthropic interests. What are your main philanthropic interests? MR. GELSINGER: Yeah. We could go on for quite a while. One of them is we began supporting work in the poverty-stricken areas of Kenya, in particular 200 kids in schools that we supported. Today we’re crossing 30,000 kids now in 25 schools in the slums of Kenya. And we’ve set a goal to hit 100,000 kids by the end of the decade that are in our schools there. And these are – you know, one of the kids now just graduated from Stanford with his bachelor’s degree, coming from, you know, less than 60 cents a week, right, in the slums of Kenya, is now graduating from one of the most prestigious institutions in the world. [Applause.] MR. RUBENSTEIN: So, the man who built Taiwan Semiconductor is Morris Chang, you mentioned. He’s now 90 years old. And he said recently that you were too old to – [laughter] – MR. GELSINGER: Right, good. MR. RUBENSTEIN: He said you were too old – MR. GELSINGER: We’re ready. MR. RUBENSTEIN: – to lead Intel. You are 60 years old. So, what did you say when you read that? MR. GELSINGER: Well, you know, first thing is, bring it on, baby. But the second thing is, you know, there was a policy in place that Intel had of required retirement at 65. And when I – you know, one of our first board meetings, I came to the board of directors. The first thing, I don’t want talent, you know, to be pushed out of the company at 65. I have key people that, you know, are doing great. I want to keep here. You know, secondly, I think it’s an outdated rule that might have been appropriate a decade or two ago, but not anymore. And third, you don’t want to take your new CEO and require him to already be planning his retirement, right? And so, we changed it. So, it’s fixed. MR. RUBENSTEIN: So, you can stay as long as you want.
And really, you know, while we’re not a car manufacturer, we are the technology company – just like Intel does – that will make this available for all of the car manufacturers, and really drive this into the industry. So very exciting time for it. But being part of Intel, and this is somewhat what EMC did with VMware. It’s a very similar play. We said, the market is not going to give us a multiple associated with a hot high- growth category. So, we’re going to create – you know, we’re going to spin a portion of it available. We’ll do an IPO. We’ll maintain the majority of it, to keep driving the synergies, but we’re going to create a separate tradable entity around Mobileye. MR. RUBENSTEIN: Have you ever been in one of these autonomous driving cars? MR. GELSINGER: About 10 times. MR. RUBENSTEIN: And you think they’re going to be around – MR. GELSINGER: Oh, it is so cool. MR. RUBENSTEIN: But do they really work? MR. GELSINGER: Absolutely. MR. RUBENSTEIN: Do you wear a helmet when you’re in those? [Laughter.] MR. GELSINGER: Absolutely not. MR. RUBENSTEIN: Oh. MR. GELSINGER: Right, as well. And I’ll tell you, you know, to me it goes from mind-blowing to mundane. Because you get in one of these things and then it’s, like, you’re not
- you took your hands off the steering wheel and hit a button? It’s, like, yeah, it’s going to take us. And the first minute you’re just, like, right? And then all of a sudden, the car, it’s adjusting lanes, it’s slowing up, speeding down, detecting the light change, and so on. And all of sudden it’s, like, you know, how are the kids doing, right? You know what I mean? It just becomes mundane. Of course, the car’s going to take – I mean, and, you know, we’ve now created the statistical and technical basis that the car is at least an order of magnitude better than the human drivers on that road. And we’re able to statistically and regularly prove that to be the case. It is, you know, fabulous at that level. It’s learning the behaviors of those roads, right? It’s learning from the other cars around it. It doesn’t get distracted by texting. You know, it doesn’t lose sight of how many drinks you’ve had the night – it does the right thing on a[n] order of magnitude better basis. And we’re doing this in high volatile areas. I’ve driven them in Tel Aviv. You know, have you ever driven in Tel Aviv? You know, nobody there drives by the rules, right? You know, it’s a crazy environment. In Munich, Paris. You know, I mean, it is really a fabulous experience.
MR. RUBENSTEIN: Yesterday you announced an acquisition of another company in Israel. You’ve made six acquisitions there in the last five years or so. So, what is it about Israel that attracts Intel? MR. GELSINGER: You know, a number of years ago – and this is very early in the days of Intel – there was a famous engineer for Intel who invented what was the precursor to the flash memory. It was called the EPROM. And he says: I’m moving back to Israel, Andy, and I’d like to start Intel-Israel. And Andy said, no blanking way, right? You know, and he left. And then he kept coming back. About every three months he came back to Andy and he said, I’d still like to start Intel-Israel. And after about nine months, you know, of getting harassed by him, he finally said: OK, we’ll give it a try. Intel was the first multinational technology company to start in Israel. And so, the love affair between Intel and Israel, you know, is now almost 50 years long that this has been underway. And they are extraordinarily innovative, hardworking. You know, and I love it. You know, one time during the Intifada one of the teams there – I was on the phone call with them. And, you know, I was saying, well, maybe we should – you know, given some of the, you know, noise that’s going on and the concerns in the market, maybe we should move this project somewhere else. And I remember Avi Kalani [ph], the guy who was running the manufacturing, he says: We have fought four wars since we’ve been part of Intel and we’ve never missed a commitment. [Laughs.] Right? It’s just that dogged determination that the people have, the confidence, the innovative. You know, and it’s one degree of separation. Everybody knows each other, and they are going to make themselves successful. It’s just been a tremendous environment. And today people have written books around the startup nation. You know, so we love it. You know, we’ve had great success there. We’re the largest employer in the country. So, you know, we really are, you know, quite fond of that relationship. MR. RUBENSTEIN: But you’re a committed Christian and Jesus was born there, so that doesn’t – MR. GELSINGER: That doesn’t hurt either. I don’t mind going to the Holy Land. MR. RUBENSTEIN: OK. So, let me ask you today, is it true that, as I’ve read, that the computing power on the missions to the moon in the ’60s were less than the computing power you have in your iPhone? MR. GELSINGER: Yeah, it’s about 100X greater what you carry in your pocket today than what took you to the moon and back. MR. RUBENSTEIN: Wow. OK, so what are – five years from today, what technology device am I going to have that’s going to mesmerize me and make my life better?