Intel has hired Seok-Hee Lee, the former chief executive of South Korea's SK Hynix and SK On, to help revive its struggling contract chip-manufacturing business. Lee joins as executive vice president of Intel's foundry unit, where he will lead a push into advanced packaging — the increasingly important work of stitching multiple chips together into a single high-performance component.
The move targets a business where Intel has slipped behind rivals. According to The Economic Times, the company is tapping Lee as an "industry veteran" to strengthen its foundry, the term for manufacturing chips designed by other companies. Chosun Ilbo frames the hire as part of an effort to "revive" that operation.
Lee's background is notable: SK Hynix is a leading memory-chip maker and a major rival of America's Micron. His experience running one of the world's biggest chip manufacturers is the kind of operational pedigree Intel is betting can close the gap with competitors.
The timing matters for investors. According to Barron's, Intel's stock has risen sharply on excitement over its chip-manufacturing plans, and the publication suggests the new hire could provide a further boost. One report also links the foundry revival to a partnership with Apple, a marquee customer whose business would validate Intel's manufacturing ambitions.
Advanced packaging has become a competitive battleground because squeezing more performance out of a single silicon chip is getting harder and more expensive. Combining specialized chips into one package — a strategy central to today's AI processors — is now one of the main ways the industry keeps improving.
Why it matters: landing a heavyweight executive from a top Asian chipmaker signals how seriously Intel is fighting to reclaim relevance in manufacturing, the part of the chip business it once dominated.