Intel’s CEO Said the Most Damaging Thing Possible… So Why Did Wall Street Give a Standing Ovation?

I don’t have any famous quotes floating around the internet like Warren Buffett’s “Only when the tide goes out…” or Ben Franklin’s “A penny saved is a penny earned.” But if I did? “Self-awareness is not for idiots.” Write it on a napkin or don’t… I don’t care. Just remember it. Because in business (and life too), self-awareness is rarer than a profitable EV startup. Everyone talks about it. Nobody actually has it.

Which brings us to Intel. More specifically, Intel’s new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan… a man who just walked into the burning remains of one of America’s most iconic tech giants, looked around, and had the guts to say the thing no one else would. “We are not in the top 10 semiconductor companies.” That’s not your typical CEO-speak. That’s not “we’re on a journey” or “positioned for the future.” That’s coming right out and saying “we fell off a cliff and we’re still checking for broken bones.” And somehow, the market actually rewarded that honesty. Shares of Intel popped more than 7% after Tan’s internal address went public. Because  investors may tolerate bad performance, but they have zero patience for corporate gaslighting (unless it’s Elon, he gets a pass for some reason).

If you’re old enough to remember, Intel used to be the apex predator of semiconductors. The name was synonymous with “cutting edge.” Your laptop sticker probably still says "Intel Inside" like it's clinging to past glory (kind of like the guy who still wears his high school letterman jacket to the gym).

Then came the AI boom… and Intel was caught flat-footed. While Nvidia was turning GPUs into the new oil and AMD was quietly stealing market share, Intel was out here still trying to make CPUs exciting. (Narrator voice: they were in fact, not.) Even worse, their attempts to break into AI hardware have been... underwhelming. Projects like Gaudi and Habana Labs exist, but they haven’t made a dent in Nvidia’s dominance.

That’s probably why Tan isn’t pretending they’re closing the gap anytime soon. He literally said the company’s turnaround is a “marathon” which is just telling investors “this is gonna take years” (but again, honesty is so rare, it will make some stick around). And then there are the layoffs. Almost 600 jobs cut in California, another 500+ in Oregon, with more expected across the global workforce. They’re shutting down the automotive chip division. And things are getting so bleak, marketing’s being handed to Accenture.

So what does this all mean? It means Intel isn’t spinning things anymore. For once, a legacy tech company is not selling a false new narrative… it’s admitting it blew the last one. That matters. Because now the stock isn’t being priced on delusion. It’s being priced on reality. And that gives Intel something it hasn’t had in a while: a floor.

Of course, there’s no guarantee Tan pulls this off. He still has to fix Intel’s foundry business, regain credibility in chip performance, and somehow make AI customers give them another look. (Good luck with that, especially while Nvidia’s doubling revenue every quarter.) But here’s the thing: he’s not pretending. And that alone sets him apart from half the S&P 500 CEO class, who would rather launch an AI rebrand than actually build something useful.

So yeah… Intel’s not in the top 10. But at least they’ve stopped pretending they are. And in business, that’s where the real turnaround begins. Because, like I said… “Self-awareness is not for idiots.” (It’s usually ignored by them.)

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Intel as mentioned in the article.