Gelsinger spent most of his career at Intel, rising to chief technology officer before leaving to run VMWare in 2012 and then returning as CEO in 2021. He was generally well respected by Wall Street and industry insiders, but on his watch, the stock underperformed the market as Intel lost ground in the AI race to Nvidia.

Pat Gelsinger's surprise resignation as Intel's CEO on Monday ends his four-year effort to rescue the struggling chipmaker—and his chance to snag a massive stock payday that could have been worth $140 million.