Intel poached a 30-year sales veteran from Samsung; in the foundry business, the hardest part isn’t the technology, but rather “not being able to sell.”

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Intel is sending a signal to the outside world with a key personnel appointment: in the competition for foundry business, the ability to win customers is now as important as technology itself.

According to Wccftech, Intel Executive Vice President Naga Chandrasekaran announced on LinkedIn that Shawn Han will join Intel in May this year, serving as Senior Vice President and General Manager of Foundry Services, reporting directly to him.

The reason this event has attracted market attention is that Shawn Han’s background highly aligns with Intel’s most urgent pain point—he has over 30 years of experience at Samsung, with his most recent role being sales leadership for Samsung's foundry business.

This personnel change reflects the structural challenges facing Intel’s foundry business. Intel has long relied on its own wafer fabs to serve its internal chip design departments, but solely depending on internal design business can no longer cover the high cost needed to maintain and expand these facilities.

To break through, Intel must bring in chip design companies that compete with it as foundry customers, which requires not only credible technology but also customer resources and business development capabilities.

Sales Weakness is the Core Challenge in Foundry Breakthrough

This recruitment directly reflects Intel’s urgent need to expand its external customer base.

This is not Intel’s first time hiring external talent for the foundry business, but unlike previous recruitments focused on process and operational experience, this time they are clearly targeting senior management with frontline sales leadership experience, marking a significant shift in strategic direction.

Intel’s foundry business is still facing a shortage of external customers.

In recent years, Intel’s competitive edge in process technology has weakened, making it increasingly difficult to attract external semiconductor design companies as contract manufacturing customers. In the foundry industry, reassuring competitors to let Intel produce their chips requires technical leadership as a prerequisite, but technical promises alone are not enough.

Customer Trust and Long-term Relationships are Half the Foundry Competition

Introducing core talent from Samsung is a strategic move for Intel to strengthen its customer network and deepen its market insight. In the foundry business, customer trust and long-term cooperation are as important as technical capabilities, and executives with global customer resources and sales management experience are considered important variables for enhancing competitiveness.

Shawn Han’s thirty years at Samsung spans both logic process node technology and sales management—since 1996, he has participated in several logic node technical projects and later led foundry sales.

This combined background gives him strong bridging ability between technical dialogue and business negotiation, which is exactly the resource-integrated talent Intel’s foundry business currently needs.

For Intel’s foundry division, which is still seeking market recognition, this appointment is more like a strategic statement: in the marathon of semiconductor foundry competition, building capacity is only the starting point, winning orders is the key.

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