Interview with Interim co-CEO at Intel and CEO of Intel Products, Michelle Johnston Holthaus

How are Intel’s products influencing the future of connectivity and AI?

On this episode of Six Five On The Road at MWC Barcelona, Patrick Moorhead, Founder, CEO, Chief Analyst, Moor Insights & Strategy, is joined by Michelle Johnston Holthaus, CEO of Intel Products and Interim Co-CEO, Intel for a conversation on Intel’s key focus areas and how Intel is driving modernization and efficiency for the AI era.

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‍Their discussion covers:

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🔹 A Focus on Products: The focus on delivering great products as a core mission for Intel, highlighting the launch of AI PCs and advancements in data center capabilities.

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🔹 Intel’s presence at Mobile World Congress: Including talks on infrastructure modernization for AI, highlighting new hardware and software products for a range of computing solutions.

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🔹 AI at the Edge: The significance of AI inferencing and how Intel is positioned to support customers with solutions that are powerful, cost-efficient, and suit various applications from the data center to the edge.

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🔹 A Foundation for Innovation: The update on Intel’s 18A process technology and how it’s foundational not just for Intel Products but also for the Intel Foundry Service, showcasing Intel’s commitment to technological innovation and customer-focused development.

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Learn more at Intel. Watch the video above, and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, so you never miss an episode.

Patrick Moorhead:
The Six Five is On the Road here in Barcelona, Spain. Mobile World Congress 2025 and we are in the Intel booth. It’s been a great show so far. Very high level of optimism out there for how to monetize how the carriers are going to monetize. Equipment makers that typically serve service providers talking about how they deliver their services and products to the enterprise. We see a lot of collaboration between the hyperscalers and the service providers and the carrier recruitment folks. Optimism? I think so. Well, we are in the Intel booth here and it’s my pleasure to introduce back to the Six Five, MJ from Intel. How are you?

Michelle Johnston Holthaus:
I’m good, thanks for having me.

Patrick Moorhead:
Absolutely. I know you’re busy, seen all the stuff going on in Intel, but really appreciate this. So co-CEO of Intel and I think one of the first conversations we had that I still get questions on from folks is when MJ said, “Hey, we are doubling down on great products” Some people say, well, of course it’s about great products. It’s always about great products. And other people are like, that was great to hear because Intel looked like they were focused on a lot of things. But I want to hear this from you and I’m a recovering product person myself. What do you mean? What do you mean by that?

Michelle Johnston Holthaus:
Yeah, it really means listening to our customers, understanding the problems they’re trying to solve and making sure we build world class products for them. We’ve been focused on a lot of things at Intel, as you said, and it’s okay to be focused on a lot of things. But what I heard from customers was we weren’t focused enough on products. We weren’t making the leaps in technology that they were expecting. We were making the investments that they wanted to see and they just weren’t sure if products were priority number one. So with the changes that we made, hopefully we’ve clarified that products is absolutely number one. And we need to build great products that our customers can solve their customers problems with and that they can rely on. And I say, listen, at the end of the day we want to be predictable and boring. We want to have a roadmap that is delivered, our say-do ratio is high and customers can win with us.

Patrick Moorhead:
I have heard some very positive vibes out there from your direct customers. So even though some people might say of course it’s great products, your customers, the ones that matter most, are saying, I was really glad to hear that and that they are very optimistic about the future. At the same time, you have very high market share in areas that sometimes people forget, like in PCs and in the Data center and on the edge, but people forget these things. But I’m glad you don’t focus on where you are, you’re focused on where you’re going into the future. I think that’s important.

Michelle Johnston Holthaus:
It is important. I think our customers want to know that we’re investing alongside them, that we’re focused on those growth markets. You know, you talked about AIPCs, obviously an area that we have a very significant lead, but we don’t take that for granted. And we know we’ve got to continue to innovate, which is one of the reasons that we lean so hard into AIPC. The software ecosystem work, really making sure that we’re allowing for an open and vibrant ecosystem. Obviously continuing to invest in datacenters as well, but we’ve got some catching up to do there. I’m certainly not confused. I launched our Xeon 6 product last week both for data center and for edge. Very excited about that. That’s certainly some of the buzz and optimism that you’ve seen this week because people are saying, hey, open virtualized networks are here. This is the step forward to actually show a positive TCO in these areas. And you know, we still have a lot of work to do in accelerators, but we have a path. We do have some customers that are very excited about Gaudi and we’ve got to continue on that journey and there’s just so many opportunities and customers want to know that when they bet on you, they don’t bet on you for a product, they bet on you for a roadmap or a generation of products. And they want to know that Intel’s all in.

Patrick Moorhead:
So let’s talk about great products.

Michelle Johnston Holthaus:
Yes, let’s do it.

Patrick Moorhead:
We’re here at MWC. I’m seeing a lot of solutions for carriers, for computing on the edge. What have you announced here?

Michelle Johnston Holthaus:
Well, we talked about our new Xeon 6 products. So we have Xeon 6 and Xeon 60 for the Edge. And really what it’s all about is better tco, better price, performance, better performance per watt. We have a media decoder within the part. There’s a lot of exciting things that come with this product that really make customers excited. And as we talk about AI, inevitably all conversations generally lead there. You know, a lot of these customers see AI coming to the edge, they see inference coming to the edge and they view this as their opportunity to use their CPU platform and the investments they’re making there to take advantage of this opportunity. And so a lot of the optimism I’m sure you’ve heard about is, oh my gosh, I have a platform that offers me great TCO, great performance per watt that I can go deploy and scale and take advantage of this massive build out and spend that we know is coming over the next decade.

Patrick Moorhead:
Yeah, I’m glad you pointed that out. Their optimism does come from the belief, and I believe it too, of this incredible AI on the edge inference, whether it’s factories, airports, warehouses, anything that is not inside of a giant data center. So I know we’ve talked a lot about this before. I mean, this was a theme probably a decade ago, or let’s say eight years ago. But I feel like generative AI has taken us to the next level where you can actually do a lot more on the edge as opposed to that just being in the data center.

Michelle Johnston Holthaus:
Yes. I mean as large language models become smaller, they become more able to compute those at the edge. You see people saying, hey, I want things at my fingertips, I don’t want them in the cloud from a security perspective, especially when you think about certain workloads. But let’s just use security as an example. And you’re running a factory as you talked about, and you’re using language models to look through all your cameras, make sure everybody’s doing what they’re supposed to be doing, then you can start to identify somebody who’s maybe not using or wearing the Right. Security gear, how do you identify them then how do you notify the floor manager that you have a problem and how do you make that change? But it needs to be quick, nimble at your fingertips, and it’s not something you want to be sharing or pushing back to the cloud. And it’s also affordable. And so those are the things that customers continue to tell us they want, but we haven’t been able to do a good job up until now of showing people how to actually do that. And so you need to go and build these proofs of concept. And as that build out becomes more cost effective and more available, this is where the software ecosystem really comes into play, because they see the needs and then they start to innovate and then you see this kind of flywheel of innovation starting to happen. And we’ve got some great examples here in the booth that are very, very exciting. But just show you that all of these vertical industries are looking for ways to become more efficient, more cost effective. And everyone knows AI has a role to play. It’s just what role does AI have to play in each one of those verticals? And very specifically to a specific company or their usage needs.

Patrick Moorhead:
Yeah. You’ve talked about some interesting things happening with AI inference. Yes. Is this what you talked about with these examples or is it something different?

Michelle Johnston Holthaus:
I think those examples are some of it, but I think we’ve all talked about Deepseek. Obviously that was, you know, a lot of press was generated that week. Yeah, I think you were on TV quite a bit. But I think what it did is it reminded everybody that AI, when it’s ubiquitous and it’s cost effective, will be used everywhere. And so everybody knew that inference was coming. The question was, are you going to deploy all this capital on training and then is that just going to waterfall down? And then I think people are now seeing that, yes, of course that is going to happen, but there’s going to be a large build out for inference as well. And how do they want to go and be part of that? And what we think at Intel is inference on the CPU. We know, and we can see that in our new Xeon 6 platform has some very good performance. And if you’re already deploying a network or a cloud full of that, and you know, you can do inferencing on top, it’s another revenue opportunity for a lot of our partners, which is very exciting to us because everything we do is through an open ecosystem system. So wherever and however we can employ that and enable it, it makes us very excited. And so I think we’re just starting to see the tip of the iceberg about what people think they can do. And then once those creative wheels get started, I think we’ll all be surprised in a year from now, all the examples we’ll have in this booth.

Patrick Moorhead:
I think historically we’ve always seen that over a certain course of time, time processing will happen where the data is collected. There are certain elements of strength which might be okay, something amazing happens in the cloud, let’s say, even with training, but ultimately it always gets down to the edge. And I can say this, I know Intel doesn’t like to say this a lot, a lot of that is going to happen on CPUs.

Michelle Johnston Holthaus:
It is.

Patrick Moorhead:
And it’s going to be a CPU with a built in accelerator. And there’s a lot of interesting architectural things going on in that space in the industry. But some of it will be done on small GPUs on the edge, some of them will be done on the cpu. I mean it just, this is the way the segmentation is going to end up, I will call it. You can tell me if I’m wrong, but I think based on your investments, I think you likely agree with the way that this will ultimately end up.

Michelle Johnston Holthaus:
Yeah, I think when I think about it from a customer’s perspective, if you’re collecting data in a factory, why do you want to pump it to the cloud? To be able to do workloads right on it, you want to be able to do it at the edge. You have the infrastructure, you’re making the investments. And I think what’s going to be interesting is I don’t think there’s going to be one fixed solution for how that’s done. Some will be done on the CPU, as you said, some will be used on small GPUs. And the best part about our AI PCs as an example is they have a fantastic integrated GPU that allows them to do that as well as a great neural processing unit as well.

Patrick Moorhead:
You’ve been very focused in a maelstrom of a lot of things going on.

Michelle Johnston Holthaus:
Sure.

Patrick Moorhead:
New CEOs, new products, I mean, new foundry. I mean there’s a lot of stuff going on here, but I’ve been pretty impressed in how focused the company has maintained. And I’m curious though, with all the stuff you read, maybe you sometimes don’t want to go and read everything. Yeah, sometimes it’s, you know, manicured right to the CEO. But what do you think are some of the things that people might be missing that maybe aren’t discussed. I try to be the adult in the room when I can. I don’t weigh in on everything. And you know, it’s not all positive.

Michelle Johnston Holthaus:
No, it’s not all positive. And Intel’s a very interesting company for a lot of people to talk about. I say I’m helping with a lot of the advertising dollars in that click through rate, but I think at the end of the day we really try to filter out the noise and focus on the things that are the most important, which is our high say-do ratio. Right. So if you look at Lunar Lake, if you look at Xeon 6, what we’ve been laser focused on is we told customers they were going to have a world class product at a certain time and making sure we execute on that. And when you think about the thousands of engineers at Intel, what I tell them they can control is what we deliver on behalf of customers, what we promise, what we do is the most important thing. We’re also very transparent with our employees about the external churn, what’s true, what’s not, what things we don’t know because that helps employees trust us as a leadership team as well. And I think at the end of the day we’re quite excited and we feel some very strong internal momentum about how we’re doing.

We hear from customers that they’re excited about the products we’re bringing to market. And sometimes it takes longer for perception to change versus all the buzz outside. But at the end of the day we can control the things that we’re responsible for. And so building world class products, delivering world class foundry remains a very important job. I’m quite excited about where we are with 18A as customer 0 for 18A. That’ll come in the second half of the year with Panther Lake. And we’re all very excited about that because we can kind of put to bed all these rumors and myths about where we are and show the world that we can deliver five nodes in four years and then be on a very strong cadence to come to really deliver world class manufacturing capabilities, not just to Intel, but to all of our partners. And what we do know is people want choice. And we’ve seen this on the product side where people want a choice. And at times that’s been good for us and not good for us. And I know people want manufacturing choice and I believe that Intel can build the best high performance compute manufacturing of anyone in the marketplace because we want to use it. We’re laser focused on what that means for us. And I think we’re laser focused on what that means for our customers.

Patrick Moorhead:
So I think in the last four years, whenever I had a briefing with an Intel senior executive, I wanted to know where we were with five nodes in four years and maybe I was too far on this side. But fundamentally, for Intel to be most successful with its products and profitable, it has to have leading edge fabs. And that’s why I asked that. A great design product on a not great process gets you in a certain place. Having two is a real challenge. Having both hitting at the same time, that’s where the magic happens as an IDM. So I have to ask, now that we’re here, can you tell us where 18A is? Not a lot is said publicly. Sometimes in financial conferences, it’s kind of like I’m kind of picking through what did she mean or what did he mean when that was said?

Michelle Johnston Holthaus:
Yeah, I think Dave and I have a very different philosophy about the way we talk about process. We really want customers telling our story, but as a customer, so I’m customer 0 for 18A, and I’m very happy. I will say there have been trials and tribulations to get here, but I feel very good about delivering a competitive product in the second half of this year that is both performant and yields well. And this is one of those series of as you talked about, rumors that we’re constantly dealing with. And I think what’s most important is we need to deliver a product because the product will speak volumes about the process. And I think we’re making very good progress for where we are in the early stages of March is exactly where we should be to be able to land this where we think it would be. Would we like to be earlier? Of course we’d like to be earlier. But I feel very good about where we are and maybe from an external customer perspective, you know, we’ve got a good pipeline. So when you’re in sales, you’re always thinking about pipeline and pushing them through that pipeline. We’ve got test chips being built, we’ve got customers engaging on the process. And I’ve had some very significant customers tell me the process is good. Michelle, I can use it. Which is just a good second vote of confidence for me.

But at the end of the day, we need great process and we need great product. And as you said, I always say great process, great product at the same time is when you can actually deliver magic for our customers. And so we’re going to be laser focused on that, but we’ll be laser focused on always, first and foremost, delivering the best and most significant products for our customers. So, you know, frankly I’m also, you know, a customer of TSMC and they’re a good partner. And so we’ll mix and match where it makes sense. Because as you think about process nodes and when they come to market, products should actually land on those process nodes at different times depending on what you want from that product. And so I think one of the things I’m most excited about is the flexibility we have to deliver on behalf of our customers because our customers want the right product at the right time. You got to hit the market window. Right. I mean, if we just think about it, Christmas does not move each year. Right. You’ve got to deliver for the holiday window. And so we’re going to maximize both of those.

Patrick Moorhead:
Okay, you talked about TSMC. There was a major announcement about a hundred billion dollar investment here in the United States. And I’m curious, do you have any thoughts on this?

Michelle Johnston Holthaus:
Yeah, you know, overall I would say I’m happy with the announcement. I mean, obviously a lot of what’s included in there is, you know, the build out that they’re always already doing, but they will bring, you know, new shells. I think any manufacturing in the United States is very positive. Very much matches the strategy we’ve had at Intel for the last 50 years in that manufacturing needs to be done here in the United States. I think probably the only place we differ is I also think transistor IP needs to be developed here in the United States. And I think that that’s something that we’ve spent a lot of time talking to the administration about. But it very much matches our overall strategy. Something, you know, my predecessor Pat was very, very bold about talking about. And a strategy I think continues for us here at Intel, which is we need to not only develop, but manufacture leading edge here in the United States. It’s extremely important and that doesn’t change. And I think seeing the administration excited about that is actually great for us. It matches the strategy we have and we welcome more manufacturing here in the United States.

Patrick Moorhead:
Yeah, this is great. I mean, for what it’s worth, I know I’m the one asking you questions, but I have a question on how much of it is incremental. Yeah, I put this out on social media, so it’s not new. How much this will actually happen. And oh, by the way, the transistor IP, if it’s not in the US it’s not completely here. So I think we’re definitely aligned on it. But it’s good to have whatever. Any more manufacturing here.

Michelle Johnston Holthaus:
Our competition makes us better.

Patrick Moorhead:
Totally.

Michelle Johnston Holthaus:
And as a customer of them, having more manufacturing here to be able to deliver locally for our customers here in the United States is extremely important to all of them. And so I view it as a win for the industry as a whole.

Patrick Moorhead:
Totally. MJ, this has been great. Thank you so much for this time and I know you’re very busy.

Michelle Johnston Holthaus:
Never too busy.

Patrick Moorhead:
Thank you. I appreciate that. I want to have you on again. Maybe at Vision. We’ll see. It’d be super. Thank you.

Michelle Johnston Holthaus:
Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Patrick Moorhead:
This is Pat Moorhead with the Six Five and Moor Insights and Strategy. You heard it from MJ. First Six Five appearance in her role. We’ve had her on before, but not as co CEO. Check out all the Mobile World Congress content and we have interviewed a lot of senior executives at Intel over the past years. Check those out too. Thanks. Have a good day.