Chipmaker Intel appointed Pat Gelsinger as its new chief executive officer starting Feb. 15, 2021. He will succeed Bob Swan, who will remain CEO until Gelsinger assumes the role.

Gelsinger, a 40-year technology industry veteran, will also join the Intel board of directors. He is a highly respected CEO and industry veteran with more than four decades of technology and leadership experience, including 30 years at Intel where he began his career.

“After careful consideration, the board concluded that now is the right time to make this leadership change to draw on Pat’s technology and engineering expertise during this critical period of transformation at Intel,” said Omar Ishrak, independent chair of the Intel board. “The board is confident that Pat, together with the rest of the leadership team, will ensure strong execution of Intel’s strategy to build on its product leadership and take advantage of the significant opportunities ahead as it continues to transform from a CPU to a multi-architecture XPU company.”

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“I am thrilled to rejoin and lead Intel forward at this important time for the company, our industry, and our nation,” said Gelsinger. “Having begun my career at Intel and learned at the feet of Grove, Noyce, and Moore, it’s my privilege and honor to return in this leadership capacity. I have tremendous regard for the company’s rich history and powerful technologies that have created the world’s digital infrastructure. I believe Intel has significant potential to continue to reshape the future of technology and look forward to working with the incredibly talented global Intel team to accelerate innovation and create value for our customers and shareholders.”

Most recently, Gelsinger served as the CEO of VMware since 2012, where he significantly transformed the company into a recognized global leader in cloud infrastructure, enterprise mobility, and cybersecurity, almost tripling the company’s annual revenues. Prior to joining VMware, Gelsinger was president and COO of EMC Information Infrastructure Products at EMC, overseeing engineering and operations for information storage, data computing, backup and recovery, RSA security, and enterprise solutions.

Before joining EMC, he spent 30 years at Intel, becoming the company’s first chief technology officer and driving the creation of key industry technologies such as USB and Wi-Fi. He was the architect of the original 80486 processor, led 14 different microprocessor programs, and played key roles in the Core and Xeon families.