Brian Matthew Krzanich (born May 9, 1960) is an American engineer. Krzanich joined Intel as an engineer in 1982 and served as chief operating officer (COO) before being promoted to CEO in May 2013. As CEO, Krzanich was credited for diversifying Intel's product offerings and workforce. However, during Krzanich's term as CEO, Intel went through major restructurings and pulled out of the mobile chip market. Because of Krzanich's decisions, Intel also struggled to produce 10-nanometer chips, compared to chip manufacturers TSMC and Samsung, resulting in numerous delays and a loss of market share in the computer chip business to rivals like AMD.
Krzanich has served on the Deere & Co. and Semiconductor Industry Association boards, as well as the Drone Advisory Committee, which advises the Federal Aviation Administration. He resigned from Intel on June 21, 2018 after a past consensual relationship with a subordinate against company policy was disclosed.
Early life and education
Krzanich is from Santa Clara County, California. He graduated from San Jose State University in 1982 with a bachelor's degree in chemistry.
Career
Intel
Krzanich began working as a process engineer at Intel's chip factory in New Mexico in 1982. He became manager of a fabrication plant in Chandler, Arizona, in 1996, and later supervised assembly and testing facilities. He held management roles within Intel's manufacturing division, managed a plant in Massachusetts, and began overseeing the company's factories and supply chains in 2007. Intel removed conflict minerals from its microprocessors while Krzanich was in charge of the company's supply chain. He cited moral obligation as the reason to take action, and said the issue was "very important and personal" to him. Intel worked to use conflict-free minerals for all microprocessors by 2014 and all products by 2016, and Krzanich was included in the documentary film Merci Congo (2016).
In January 2012, Krzanich was promoted to the role of chief operating officer. He led Intel's China strategy in this role.
Krzanich served as chief executive officer (CEO) of Intel starting in May 2013. In this role, Krzanich has been credited for expanding Intel's offerings beyond central processing units (CPUs) and into other technologies, including 5G wireless networks, artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, cloud computing, drones, and wearables. Intel has also explored artificial, augmented, and virtual reality, as well as machine learning, during his tenure.
In January 2015, he announced Intel's $300 million Diversity in Technology initiative to support the company's goal to achieve full representation of women and underrepresented minorities in Intel's U.S. workforce by 2020, and accelerate diversity and inclusion across the technology industry at large. These activities include funding engineering scholarships at historically black colleges and universities, establishing a professional gaming women's team, and sponsoring female students to attend game developer conferences in partnership with the International Game Developers Association. In addition to Intel's Diversity in Technology initiative, the company's Hack Harassment campaign has worked to address cyberbullying with Krzanich as CEO.
In January 2017, Krzanich spoke out against Executive Order 13769, U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order banning entry into the country by residents of seven predominantly Muslim nations. In February, he stood alongside Trump at the White House to announce a $7 billion investment in a new factory in Chandler. However, the factory was not built. The announcement was made one day after Intel and other companies told a court that they believed Trump's immigration order was unconstitutional. Krzanich also expressed support for the president's regulatory and tax policies on behalf of Intel. Krzanich supported transgender rights before and after Trump announced the reinstatement of the ban on military service by transgender individuals in July.
In August, Krzanich became the third executive to leave the Trump administration's American Manufacturing Council in 24 hours (following Kenneth Frazier and Kevin Plank, the CEOs of Merck & Co. and Under Armour, respectively), based on the president's response to the Unite the Right rally. In a blog post confirming his resignation, Krzanich said "promoting American manufacturing 'should not be a political issue. He and other CEOs in the technology industry called for legal protections for "Dreamers", or immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children, after the Trump administration rescinded the immigration policy known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in September 2017.