Dear Lip-Bu: A Totally Serious (Not At All Ridiculous) Plan for Intel to Be the Cool Kid of AI Again

Hi Lip-Bu,

Congrats on inheriting the keys to the blue-badge mothership. The last year has been… eventful. You’ve waved wafers while laying out a 14A/18A roadmap to woo foundry customers; you’ve pushed Intel’s Ohio mega-fab completion out to 2030-ish; you’ve carved out Altera to trim costs; and—plot twist—Nvidia of all companies just wrote a multi-billion-dollar check that jolted the stock awake. The vibes are back. Kind of.

All of that is the “normal” playbook. But “normal” doesn’t make you cool in AI. Jensen has leather jackets; you have backside power delivery. It’s time to lean in. Below is a completely rational, highly investable, and 100% ridiculous plan to make Intel the It-kid of AI—again.

1) Rebrand the Tech: If “Gaudi 3” Sounds Scholarly, “Gaudy³” Sounds Iconic

You’ve got a credible accelerator in Gaudi 3, with PCIe cards slated for the second half of 2025. But the name is reading “graduate seminar” not “stadium tour.” Rebrand it as Gaudy³ and ship it in limited-edition anodized heat-sinks bedazzled with LEDs that pulse to the beat of token throughput. Bundle a “Prom Night Inference” preset that runs Llama like it’s slow-dancing under a disco ball. It’s still the same card under the sparkle—capable of scaled inference and enterprise LLMs—just with swagger.

Tagline: “It’s not just fast. It’s Gaudy.”

2) Lunar Lake Launch Parties: 48 TOPS, 48 DJs, 48 Hours

Your new AI PC chips pack up to 48 NPU TOPS—enough for Microsoft’s Copilot-y ambitions on device. Celebrate with a 48-hour launch set featuring 48 DJs who spin only samples generated by the NPU in real time. Album title: “Backside Power Delivery (Director’s Cut)”—a tasteful nod to PowerVia and the whole 18A > 14A progression. Tech press will write about the specs; TikTok will write about the vibes.

3) Make Ohio a Theme Park: Intel FabLand, Opening ~2031 (Give or Take)

Turn the New Albany campus into FabLand while the fabs finish maturing. Rides include The Yield Curve (a roller coaster that only goes up after months of tuning) and Photoresist Rapids (you will get wet; wear PPE). Every time a construction milestone moves right on the Gantt chart, the park unlocks a new snack stand called Slippage. When the first wafer ships in the 2030–2031 window, trigger a fireworks show shaped like a perfectly uniform die.

4) The 18A/14A Hype House: Livestream PDK Drops Like Sneaker Launches

You’re already courting lead customers on 14A and moving 18A into volume. Now treat PDKs like streetwear drops. Livestream a “PDK Unboxing” where Synopsys and Cadence CEOs unroll design rules while a robot named Chip deadpans hot takes about via resistance. Limited-run merch: “PowerDirect: Because Backside Is the New Frontside.” (Yes, that’s real tech—and yes, the shirt slaps.)

5) The Foundry 49%-Off Sale (Terms and Conditions Apply)

Analysts keep whispering that you might sell up to 49% of the foundry biz to outside investors while keeping the crown jewels glued to Santa Clara. Fine. Announce it as “Foundry Friday”—every quarter, one mysterious percentage point goes on “sale,” but in exchange, the buyer must fund a community college lithography program and let every graduate name one EUV tool. It’s governance; it’s goodwill; it’s chaos. (And yes, 51% stays home.)

6) The Altera Plot Twist: “You Can’t Fire Me—I Own 49% of Me”

You just offloaded 51% of Altera to Silver Lake to slim OpEx. Great. Now stage a “friendly custody battle” where Altera and Intel ceremonially trade FPGA dev boards across a velvet rope every earnings call. Wall Street calls it cost discipline; creators call it performance art; engineers call it “Tuesday.” Bonus: each hand-off reduces SG&A by 10 basis points in spirit.

7) Lean Into the Nvidia Bromance: “Enemies to Friends to Frenemies” Tour

Nvidia just threw $5 billion at your stock while the two of you talk chip collabs. Spin it as a buddy-cop crossover: “Huang & Tan: Accelerated Justice.” Posters show a leather jacket next to a 300-mm wafer. The fine print says, “No promise to use Intel Foundry… yet,” which is the most tantalizing cliff-hanger since Dune: Part Two.

8) Replace Earnings Slides With a Live Yield-Tuning Stream

Forget bullet charts. Hook an overhead camera over a pilot line and let investors watch defect density tick down in real time while a soothing voice whispers, “We are closing in on D0.” When analysts ask about gross margin, you reply, “Observe the EMIB-T interposer alignment.” If they still press, release a therapy dog named Foveros into the room.

9) A Leather-Jacket Alternative: The Cleanroom-Chic Tech Cape

Everyone does jackets. You need a Class-100 compatible tech cape that snaps over a bunny suit and billows majestically when you say “risk production.” Every keynote ends with a cape-swirl and a new UMC-collab 12/16nm derivative swirling on the confidence monitors. It’s couture. It’s cross-license. It’s content.

10) Corporate Wellness, But Make It Wafer-Yoga

Morale matters during 25,000 headcount cuts and an RTO edict. Offer Wafer-Yoga: sun salutations to EUV steppers, mindful polishing for CMP, and a “let it flow” mantra for copper interconnects. The pose names are HR-approved; the catharsis is real. (Also, maybe lighten up the RTO, or at least issue flex desks called “Tile Lake.”)

11) Ship a Consumer Gadget Named “Intel Inside Voice.”

It’s a desk totem with a Lunar Lake-class NPU that listens for meetings you should cancel and sends the decline with a graph of your cortisol. Press a button and it generates a photorealistic image of your future if you say yes to another status call. It won’t increase revenue, but it will make you beloved, which is priceless and also somehow a KPI.

12) Do a Collab With an Unexpected Icon: LEGO x Intel: Build-A-Node

A 1:1000-scale EUV scanner made of bricks, with a mini-figure ASML tech who only says “pellicle” and “dose.” The build guide teaches kids that 14A’s PowerDirect is basically the silicon equivalent of plugging your fridge into the wall behind the drywall. Parents will cry; analysts will initiate coverage.

13) Radical Transparency: Start a Substack Called Moore’s Laughter

Every week you publish one chart (yields up, capex down, Gaudi shipments sideways) and one meme (Backside Power Delivery as a runway look). The kicker: a standing footnote that says “Ohio: still happening; ETA 2030–2032; stop asking unless you brought steel.” People will still ask. That’s good for open rates.

14) The One Boring Thing That Actually Matters

Between the capes and the theme parks, keep shipping: Lunar Lake AI PCs that feel “instant,” Gaudi 3 kits that are easy to buy, and 18A customer tape-outs that turn into revenue. You’ve already shown wafers, PDKs, and progress on U.S. fabs and packaging. Now operationalize the not-boring part: momentum.

TL;DR (for the search crawlers and the humans they love)

• Intel AI comeback playbook: Gaudi 3 (aka Gaudy³), Lunar Lake NPUs (up to 48 TOPS), 18A→14A foundry roadmap with PowerVia/PowerDirect, advanced packaging (Foveros/EMIB), and the occasional billion-dollar Nvidia plot twist.
• Corporate theater as strategy: FabLand, cape couture, yield-stream earnings, and Substack candor—because narrative is a throughput multiplier.
• Serious underneath the satire: shipping silicon, winning foundry customers, and getting Ohio over the line—eventually.

Sincerely (and unseriously),

A Concerned Fan of Backside Power Delivery