From Singapore: the semiconductor industry's most closely watched turnaround story took another unexpected twist this week, as Intel confirmed that Kevin O'Buckley, the head of its foundry services division, has left the company for a senior role at rival Qualcomm. The departure, reported by Tom's Hardware, sent Intel's shares down nearly 3%, settling at around US$45.46 in Thursday's session.
O'Buckley's exit came after just two years heading Intel Foundry, a relatively short tenure at the helm of what the company considers one of its most strategically critical businesses. At Qualcomm, he takes up the role of executive vice president of global operations and supply chain, overseeing global semiconductor operations across manufacturing engineering, foundry and supplier partnerships, supply chain, and procurement. That is a substantial brief at a company whose chip designs are woven into virtually every high-end Android smartphone and a growing share of Windows laptops.
From now on, Intel Foundry will be headed by Naga Chandrasekaran, who was previously in charge of front-end process technology development and manufacturing. Chandrasekaran joined Intel in 2024 from Micron, where he served as senior vice president for technology development, and brings decades of experience spanning semiconductor manufacturing and research and development. Intel was at pains to frame the transition as continuity rather than crisis. In a statement provided to Tom's Hardware, the company said "Intel Foundry remains one of Intel's highest strategic priorities, and under Naga Chandrasekaran's leadership the organisation is focused on disciplined execution and delivering for customers."
The scope attached to Chandrasekaran is broad: next-generation silicon logic nodes, advanced packaging solutions, and test technologies, while also supervising front-end wafer fabrication and back-end assembly and packaging operations worldwide. The same structure ties in customer engagement and ecosystem initiatives, strategic planning, corporate quality and reliability programmes, and supply chain operations. In practice, this consolidates a role that Intel previously split across multiple executives.
The exit is not an isolated incident. CEO Lip-Bu Tan has been attempting to flatten Intel's executive leadership, cut costs, and secure new customers since taking charge last March, and the company has seen a series of major leadership exits since then. In June, chief strategy officer Safroadu Yeboah-Amankwah departed; chief executive of products Michelle Johnston Holthaus left in September after more than three decades at the firm; and November saw Intel's chief technology and AI officer Sachin Katti exit to join OpenAI. O'Buckley's departure brings that list to a notable length.
Some observers have pointed to internal restructuring as a possible catalyst. Speculation suggests O'Buckley may have previously held a direct reporting relationship with CEO Lip-Bu Tan; following Intel Foundry's reorganisation, his reporting structure shifted to Chandrasekaran. Whether this organisational change influenced his decision remains unclear. Intel has not publicly addressed the reasons for the departure.
There is a legitimate counter-narrative here, and it deserves fair hearing. Intel's critics have long argued that its foundry ambitions were structurally underfunded and technologically behind the curve relative to TSMC and Samsung. That assessment still carries weight. Intel Foundry's revenue base remains overwhelmingly internal through projected 2027, and external merchant revenue collapsed after 2023, remaining modest relative to total revenue even under forward estimates. Winning third-party customers at scale is a different business from manufacturing your own chips, and Intel has struggled to make that cultural and operational transition convincingly.
Yet the bull case is not without substance. Intel has earned some positive press with its Panther Lake chip, which is partially manufactured by Intel Foundry on its 18A process node, a proof-of-concept that the technology can work in production. Intel wants the foundry to reach operational profit break-even by the end of 2027, focused on driving volume on its 18A process node with its own products, and executives have also reaffirmed commitment to the next-generation 14A process, stating they are in active discussions with external customers.
There is also an intriguing subplot worth tracking. One open question is whether Intel Foundry could produce chips for Qualcomm in the future. Nothing is confirmed, but the move places an Intel Foundry veteran in a role that directly influences how Qualcomm chooses partners, manages production, and allocates supply chain priorities. O'Buckley's institutional knowledge of Intel's manufacturing capabilities is now sitting inside a potential customer.
For Australian businesses, the trade implications of semiconductor industry stability are direct. Australia's technology sector, its defence industry, and its growing data centre operators all depend on reliable and competitively priced chip supply. The Department of Industry, Science and Resources has identified semiconductor supply chains as a critical vulnerability in Australia's critical technology strategy, and the concentration of advanced chip manufacturing in East Asia remains a sovereign risk consideration for Canberra. An Intel that successfully builds a credible Western foundry alternative to TSMC matters for Australia's strategic calculus, not just for tech consumers.
The US government currently holds a 10% stake in Intel, while Nvidia holds US$5 billion of the company's stock and SoftBank invested US$2 billion in the company last year, reflecting the degree to which Washington has decided Intel's survival as a manufacturing entity is a national interest matter. That political backstop is real, and it gives Intel a runway that pure market logic might not. The Semiconductor Industry Association has consistently argued that maintaining a competitive Western foundry ecosystem is essential to supply chain resilience.
The honest assessment is that this leadership change is simultaneously less alarming than the share price reaction implies and more consequential than Intel's reassuring statements suggest. Chandrasekaran is not an outsider parachuted into crisis. He has been running the technology and manufacturing operation since mid-2024, and his expanded remit is a consolidation that Intel signalled months ago. The more important question is whether the 18A and 14A nodes can attract the external customer volume that transforms Intel Foundry from an internal cost centre into a genuine commercial business. On that front, the next critical milestones will be Intel's ability to demonstrate clear progress in execution and customer deliveries under Chandrasekaran's direction. Personnel moves grab headlines; wafer starts and customer logos will determine whether the strategy holds.
Reasonable people in the investment community, in government tech policy, and in the broader industry disagree sharply about Intel's trajectory. What is clear is that the global semiconductor race has profound implications well beyond Silicon Valley, and Australia's ability to participate in the digital economy depends, in part, on how that race resolves. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has recorded consistent growth in Australian technology imports, and the cost and availability of advanced semiconductors flows directly into that trade equation. Stability at Intel Foundry, whenever it arrives, will be felt in supply chains that stretch all the way to Sydney and beyond.