Intel is being replaced by Nvidia in the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index. So sad! How far have the mighty fallen..
Intel is a legendary company. And not just that, Andy Grove Sir is a legendary business leader. I don’t think any company has had more impact in the world of technology than Intel, or that any single business leader has had more impact in the world of management than Andy Grove Sir. Both of these “figures” have had a different place in the world of business that was not just unprecedented, but also seemingly everlasting. Have you read Andy Grove Sir’s books, “Only the paranoid will survive” and “High Output Management”? They’re easily the BEST books on business ever written. And by many miles.
But nothing is everlasting, is it?
Businesses are totally dependent on people. The word “company” itself comes from the Latin word “companio”, which translates to “the one who eats bread with you”. When the people breaking bread change, the company changes. And that’s that.
As a company, Intel ruled the rooster in the PC era of computing. The company, more than anyone else in the tech industry, essentially shaped the future of technology. The phrase “Intel Inside” made it a household name, and it was the backbone of both Microsoft and Apple’s devices ecosystems.
But Andy Grove Sir retired in 2005, and since then, Intel hasn’t had one good news to share. It missed the smartphone tech completely, the PC market dwindled, its manufacturing faltered, its culture of extreme meritocracy got replaced by the surely malignant DEI initiatives, and it kept getting farther and farther from its core identity as a pioneer of technology research.
In short, whatever Andy Grove Sir taught and wrote in his books, the subsequent management basically did the opposite. And now Intel is looking like a “has been” in the world of computing technology.
This reminds me of a beautiful quote by Andy Grove Sir:
“Business success contains the seeds of its own destruction. Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.”
So true! Intel, despite having the vision and leadership of Andy Grove Sir, couldn’t manage to roll with the times and had one failure after the other, while its Babu leadership probably took salaries and found new jobs. And while the good, long-standing structural benefits of the company held the fort for quite some time, Nvidia finally overtook it in market cap in 2020.
Now Nvidia, a much smaller startup in the past, is now worth over $3 Trillion, while Intel is only worth around $150 Billion. It’s almost unbelievable.
But all isn’t lost for Intel just as yet. Its foray in the world of AI focused GPUs might bring it back in black. Who knows?
Anything is possible if Intel goes back to its roots of pure meritocracy. Anything is possible, unless it gets acquired tomorrow.
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