By Evereth Woodruff 
Intel Chief Executive Lip-Bu Tan was told by US President Donald Trump to step down after a chip design software firm he managed pleaded guilty to violating US export controls.
“The Chief Executive of Intel is highly conflicted and must resign, immediately,” Trump posted on Truth Social on August 7. “There is no other solution to this problem.”
The comments followed a letter sent by US Senator Tom Cotton to Intel chairman Frank Yeary on August 5, expressing concern about the security and integrity of Intel’s operations and their potential impact on US national security.
Cotton pointed out that Cadence, an electronic design automation (EDA) software maker, pleaded guilty on July 28 to illegally selling its products to a Chinese military university and transferring its technology to an associated Chinese semiconductor company without obtaining licenses.
“These illegal activities occurred under Tan’s tenure,” Cotton said in his letter.
He added that the US government awarded approximately $8 billion to Intel under the CHIPS and Science Act, while the company is required to be a responsible steward of American taxpayer dollars and comply with applicable security regulations.
He said Tan’s associations with China raise questions about Intel’s ability to fulfill these obligations.
He asked Intel’s board to explain whether:
- It was aware of Cadence’s subpoenas before hiring Tan as Chief Executive;
- It required Tan to divest from his positions in semiconductor firms linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or the People’s Liberation Army (PLA);
- Tan disclosed any remaining investments, professional roles, or ties to Chinese companies to the US government.
Tan sent a note to all Intel employees on August 7 stating that there has been a lot of misinformation circulating about his past roles at Walden International and Cadence.
“Over 40+ years in the industry, I’ve built relationships around the world and across our diverse ecosystem – and I have always operated within the highest legal and ethical standards,” he says in the note.
“My reputation has been built on trust – on doing what I say I’ll do, and doing it the right way. This is the same way I am leading Intel,” he adds. “We are engaging with the [Trump] Administration to address the matters that have been raised and ensure they have the facts.”
‘I’m an overseas Chinese’
Tan, dubbed the “Godfather of the chip industry,” was born into a Malaysian Chinese family in 1959. He grew up in Singapore and later became an American.
His father was the chief writer of Nanyang Siang Pau, and his mother was a dormitory warden at Nanyang University (now Nanyang Technological University) in Singapore.
Tan was admitted to the Department of Physics at Nanyang University at the age of 16. After studying nuclear engineering at America’s elite Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he pursued a degree in business administration at the University of San Francisco.
In 1987, he founded Walden International with an initial management fund of $3 million, focusing on early-stage technology investments.
According to Chinese media, Walden International began investing in Chinese startups in 1994, starting with Little Swan, a washing machine manufacturer, and subsequently investing in numerous other companies, including Sina.com, Skyworth, DJI, Meituan and Mindray.
In 2000, Walden International financed Taiwanese entrepreneur Zhang Rujing in founding the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC).
“Over the past 20 years, every time SMIC overcame adversity and achieved every process breakthrough, Walden International has been with SMIC, standing by it through thick and thin and providing its full support,” Tan says in an article when SMIC went public on the Shanghai Stock Exchange STAR Market in July 2020.
He praised SMIC for having advanced its products from 250 nanometers to 14 nm within two decades.
He also said Walden International had invested in more than 500 companies globally, including 120 semiconductor firms. Among these, 110 companies went public.
In 2009, he set up Sakarya Limited and Seine Limited in Hong Kong to manage his investments in China. In 2011, Walden International, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Shanghai government established Shanghai Huaxin Venture Capital Enterprise, one of the first funds in China dedicated to the country’s semiconductor industry.
“I am an overseas Chinese and have always had a Chinese complex,” he told Jiemian.com in an interview in 2018. “Although Cadence is an American company, within the scope allowed by the US government, we will help domestic [Chinese] companies in tools and intellectual property as much as possible.”
In April 2025, Reuters reported that Tan controls more than 40 Chinese companies and funds, and has minority stakes in over 600 via his investment firms.
Cadence’s case
While investing in China, Tan joined Cadence’s board in 2004 and was the company’s Chief Executive from 2009 to 2021.
At the CDNLive 2018 conference, Xia Yu, director of Huawei HiSilicon Platform and Key Technology Development Department, complained about the slow development of Cadence’s Technology Computer-Aided Design (TCAD) software.
“We like to work with customers like HiSilicon. They run fast themselves, and they push us to run fast too,” Tan said.
At that time, Trump, in his first term, had not yet sanctioned Huawei Technologies, HiSilicon, and SMIC. Chinese fabless chipmakers could freely order chips from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
On July 28, the US Justice Department announced that Cadence agreed to plead guilty and pay over $140 million in fines for unlawfully selling EDA hardware, software, and semiconductor design intellectual property (IP) technology to the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT).
NUDT, a university under the leadership of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s Central Military Commission, was added to the US Commerce Department’s Entity List in February 2015 due to its use of US-origin components to produce supercomputers believed to support nuclear explosive simulation and military simulation activities in the PRC.
According to court documents, Cadence and its units in China violated US export controls by providing EDA tools to NUDT from February 2015 to April 2021. Tan stepped down as Cadence’s Chief Executive in December 2021 and Chairman in May 2023.
In July 2023, the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the US and the CCP wrote to Tan, expressing serious concern about Walden International’s investments in Chinese artificial intelligence and chip firms.
In February 2024, the Select Committee on the CCP published a report about how Walden and four other US venture capital funds helped fuel the Chinese military and human rights abuses in China.
Despite all these disputes, Tan became Intel’s chief executive on March 18 this year.
Most Chinese media and pundits have praised Tan for his new position. They said Chinese people feel proud that “Chinese faces” (Jensen Huang, Lisa Su, Hock Tan, and Lip-Bu Tan) are now controlling four US chip giants (Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, and Intel, respectively).
Huang and Su were born in Taiwan, while Hock Tan hails from Malaysia.
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