India-born Randhir Thakur to head newly created foundry business for Intel

Intel has named India-born semiconductor industry veteran Randhir Thakur to lead its newly formed foundry business.

The American chipmaker major has announced its plans to become a major provider of US and Europe-based foundry capacity ‘to serve the incredible global demand for semiconductor manufacturing’.

“To deliver this vision, Intel is establishing a new standalone business unit, Intel Foundry Services (IFS), led by semiconductor industry veteran Randhir Thakur, who will report directly to chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger,” said the company in a press release.


Indian origin leaders have been instrumental in transforming and leading some of the global technology giants in the recent years. These leaders are at the centre-stage across companies such as Google, Microsoft, IBM, Adobe and others.

India-born Sundar Pichai, who is responsible for the launch of the dominant Chrome web browser, and was previously the product head for Android, Chrome, Maps, and other popular Google products, was named Google CEO on August 10, 2015.

Last April, the Indian-American technology industry veteran Arvind Krishna became the CEO of IBM and this year he has become the Chairman and CEO.

Satya nadella, who hails from Indian city Hyderabad, became the CEO of Microsoft in 2014. He succeeded Steve Ballmer.

Shantanu Narayen, who is also from Hyderabad, became the CEO of Adobe in 2007.

Intel said the IFS unit would be differentiated from other foundry offerings with a combination of leading-edge process technology and packaging, committed capacity in the US and Europe, and a world-class IP portfolio for customers, including x86 cores as well as ARM and RISC-V ecosystem IPs.

The company said it expects to build on its existing relationships with third-party foundries, which today manufacture a range of Intel technology – from communications and connectivity to graphics and chipsets.

Gelsinger on March 23 shared his vision for “IDM 2.0,” a major evolution of Intel’s integrated device manufacturing (IDM) model and announced significant manufacturing expansion plans, starting with an estimated $20 billion investment to build two new factories (or fabs) in Arizona.