Intel Leadership Shake-Up: Chief of Products Michelle Johnston Holthaus Departs

Intel is undergoing another major round of leadership changes under new CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who took charge in March 2025. The semiconductor giant announced on Monday that Michelle Johnston Holthaus, its Chief Executive of Products, will leave the company after more than 30 years of service. Holthaus will continue to support Intel as a strategic adviser during the transition.

As part of its restructuring, Intel is also creating a central engineering group focused on developing a custom silicon business for external clients. This new division will be led by Srinivasan “Srini” Iyengar, who joined Intel from Cadence Design Systems in July.

In addition, Intel confirmed several other high-profile appointments:

• Kevok Kechichian, a veteran from ARM, will head Intel’s data center group.
• Jim Johnson has been promoted to Senior Vice President and General Manager of the client computing group.
• Naga Chandrasekaran, currently Chief Technology and Operations Officer at Intel Foundry, will expand his responsibilities as the company doubles down on its custom chip manufacturing business.

These moves highlight Intel’s strategy to strengthen its position in the semiconductor market, expand its foundry services, and push further into the AI and data center sectors amid rising competition from NVIDIA, AMD, and ARM-based rivals.

“With Srini leading Central Engineering, we’re aligning innovation and execution more tightly in service to customers,” Tan said in a company press release. “We are laser-focused on delivering world-class products and empowering our engineering teams to move faster and execute with excellence. Kevork, Jim, and Srini are exceptional leaders whose deep technical acumen and industry relationships will be instrumental as we continue building a new Intel.”

This news comes just a few weeks after the U.S. government announced a plan to convert existing government grants into a 10% stake in Intel. The deal was structured to penalize Intel if the company dropped below 50% ownership of its foundry unit.

These weren’t the only leadership changes at Intel this year.

Tan taking over as CEO in March is a notable one. In July the company announced that it hired four new people for sales and engineering roles including Greg Ernst to serve as Intel’s chief revenue officer.

Intel declined to comment.