Nine months after being promoted to run Intel’s products business, Michelle Johnston Holthaus is stepping away from the job — and, for now, the company she’s spent more than three decades at. The move is the latest sign that new CEO Lip-Bu Tan is rearranging the deck chairs as he tries to fix a company that many investors and customers say has lost its way.

The quick facts

• Michelle Johnston Holthaus notified Intel she was resigning on Sept. 7, 2025, and will remain with the company in a non-executive capacity through March 1, 2026, to help with the transition. That detail is spelled out in Intel’s SEC filing.
• Holthaus had been named CEO of Intel Products in December 2024 and briefly served as one of the company’s interim co-CEOs after Pat Gelsinger’s exit.
• Intel is simultaneously naming several new leaders and reorganizing product groups — including hiring Arm veteran Kevork Kechichian to run the Data Center Group and forming a new central engineering organization.

Who is Michelle Johnston Holthaus

Holthaus is not a junior exec. She’s a 30-plus-year Intel veteran who worked her way up through client and channel teams and who ran the Client Computing Group before being promoted to run Intel Products — the unit that designs the chips that still make up roughly two-thirds of Intel’s revenue. Her elevation in December 2024 was part of the board’s effort to stabilize leadership after a chaotic period that included the ouster of Pat Gelsinger.

Compensation filings and proxy disclosures show Holthaus was a well-paid member of the senior team: her remuneration package, as adjusted in early 2025, included a raised base salary and very large equity awards, and proxy data put her “compensation actually paid” for 2024 in the low-to-mid-$10-million range. Those numbers matter because they illustrate how much the company was betting on internal continuity before deciding to rework its product leadership.

What Intel said — and what it didn’t

Intel’s 8-K with the SEC is terse: Holthaus resigned for “Good Reason” (a legal term defined in her offer letter), she’ll stay through March to ensure a smooth handover, and she’ll be eligible for severance under Intel’s executive plan when she departs. The filing does not offer a blow-by-blow rationale for her exit. That silence is notable at a company where public statements from the new CEO have been unusually blunt and operationally specific.

Lip-Bu Tan, who became CEO in March, has made no secret that he intends to personally tighten the reins on product decisions. In recent public remarks he said every major chip design will be reviewed and approved by him before tape-out — a direct signal that product design is becoming a far more centralized, CEO-driven function. For a product’s chief, that is a fundamental change in authority.

The reorg: new faces, new teams

Intel is using Holthaus’s exit to accelerate a leadership reshuffle. The company has hired Kevork Kechichian — known for senior engineering roles at Arm, Qualcomm and NXP — to run the Data Center Group. Intel is also creating a “central engineering” group led by Srinivasan (Srini) Iyengar to focus on custom silicon, and it’s broadening responsibilities for other senior leaders in foundry and client computing. Those moves are being positioned as a way to make the product roadmap simpler and more customer-focused.

That hire is a symbolic one: bringing an Arm-era engineering leader into Intel’s data center business sends a clear message that Tan wants fresh, external product execution DNA, not just internal continuity. Industry watchers see it as a signal that Intel plans to reinvent how it designs and ships server chips — fast, iterative, and under closer executive oversight.

The product problem — and the plan to fix it

Intel’s product issues aren’t abstract. The company has acknowledged public missteps with recent client and server chips, and executives have told investors they’re not satisfied with the competitiveness of the current data-center lineup. CFO Dave Zinsner recently told analysts that Intel will “adjust the roadmap” so the company “is listening to customers,” and that getting the server portfolio where management wants it will be a multi-year effort. In short: expect product changes, and expect them to be gradual.

Put bluntly: Tan wants fewer SKUs, simpler architectures and better cost structures — and he is prepared to personally sign off on the designs that survive that filter. For engineers and program managers used to a looser approval path, that’s a big shift. For customers who have grumbled about Intel’s complexity and pricing, it may be welcome — but it also risks creating short-term disruption in roadmaps and partner relationships.

The human side: Oregon, diversity and who’s left

Holthaus’ departure is also material in a cultural sense. She was one of the few senior executives based in Oregon, where Intel’s most advanced site — spread across multiple campuses west of Portland — has for years been the company’s engineering heartland. Intel’s Oregon operations have employed tens of thousands and remain one of the state’s largest private employers; recent waves of layoffs have already hit Hillsboro and surrounding campuses hard. The local impact of executive turnover matters to communities that have built years of economic planning around Intel’s presence.

Her exit also changes the math on gender diversity at the top. With Holthaus gone, only one woman remains among Intel’s seven executives as designated in the company’s leadership roster: chief legal officer April Miller Boise. That’s a sharp reminder that leadership churn can quickly alter representation at the top, even at companies that publicly emphasize inclusion. And it follows the retirement announcement earlier this year of Ann Kelleher, who led Intel’s technology development organization — another senior woman whose exit shrank the diversity pipeline.

What this could mean for customers, rivals and Wall Street

For customers — cloud providers, enterprise IT shops and PC OEMs — the immediate question is continuity. Intel’s chips still power a large portion of the server and PC market, but customers want predictable roadmaps and timely product availability. Tan’s decision to personally gate major designs may reduce some of the “feature creep” and complexity that customers have complained about, but it could also slow down launches if more design reviews are required.

For rivals, Intel’s shakeup is both an opening and a risk. AMD’s server business and Arm-based alternatives have been gaining share; anything that slows Intel’s product cadence helps them. Conversely, if the reorg produces clearer, cheaper, better-performing chips, Intel could reclaim momentum — but that’s a multiyear project, not an overnight fix.

For Wall Street, this is another chapter in a long narrative about execution. Investors wanted changes; the board delivered a new CEO and a fast reorg. Whether the new hires and Holthaus’ exit translate into better margins, more competitive products, or higher market share remains to be seen — and Intel’s own leadership has warned that meaningful improvement will take time.

Holthaus’ legacy — and what she leaves behind

Holthaus leaves after a long Intel career and with a track record of steady stewardship of client businesses that used to be the company’s unchallenged strength. She was promoted to lead the Products group during one of the firm’s most turbulent years; she served as interim co-CEO during the CEO transition; and she helped hold large parts of Intel together as the board and new management plotted a course correction. Those are not small achievements — and they’re the reason Intel’s public language about her departure has struck a respectful tone.

The bottom line

This is leadership housekeeping with strategic teeth. Holthaus’s exit consolidates Lip-Bu Tan’s playing field: he’s making product design something he will personally sign off on, importing outside engineering leadership, and reshaping teams to be leaner and more customer-aware. That may be the reset Intel needs — but it’s unlikely to be painless, and the company’s ability to execute the new plan will decide whether the change looks prescient or merely cosmetic a few quarters from now.