Intel has hired a chief GPU architect to oversee the chipmaker’s AI accelerator efforts.

The news was revealed by Intel’s CEO Lip-Bu Tan during a speech at Cisco’s AI Summit this week, who didn’t name the hire but said they took “some persuasion” to join the company.

Reuters later reported that former Qualcomm executive Eric Demmers, who joined Intel last month, will lead the project, reporting to Intel's data center chip chief Kevork Kechichian.

Intel has traditionally produced CPUs, processors with a limited number of cores, making them best suited for serial computing tasks. GPUs, such as those produced by Nvidia, have thousands of smaller cores and are used for parallel computing tasks, such as AI and high-performance computing.

In October 2025, Intel unveiled a new data center GPU, code-named Crescent Island, specifically designed to handle inferencing workloads. Announced at the 2025 OCP Global Summit, Intel said the AI accelerator will offer high memory capacity and energy-efficient performance.

Crescent Island represents a renewed effort from Intel to make headway in the AI accelerator space after its Gaudi offering failed to challenge AMD and Nvidia.

Intel debuted the Gaudi 3 AI accelerator in April 2024; however, on the company’s Q3 2024 earnings call, former CEO Pat Gelsinger told analysts that uptake of Gaudi has been slower than anticipated and Intel had failed to meet its target of $500 million in revenue for Gaudi in 2024.

While the chipmaker has been working to turn around its ailing foundry business in recent years, and earlier this month, Intel CFO David Zinsner admitted that the company misjudged demand for data center CPUs and, as a result, was expecting to see a product shortage hit its “lowest level” in Q1, before improving in Q2 and beyond.