Intel loses AI head Justin Hotard to Nokia

Justin Hotard, the head of Intel's data center and AI group, has left the company to become CEO of telecommunications equipment maker Nokia.

On Monday, Nokia reported that Hotard will replace Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark, who will step down on March 31 after leading Nokia for four and a half years. Hotard will take over the day after, and Lundmark will remain as his adviser for the rest of the year.

Hotard joined Intel a year ago from Hewlett Packard Enterprise, where he led the company's high-performance computing, AI and labs unit. Hotard was responsible for some of Intel's critical products, including the Xeon data center processor.

Intel appointed Karin Eibschitz Segal as an interim replacement for Hotard, the company said. Segal has been at Intel for nearly two decades. She has served as vice president of the Design Engineering Group, general manager of Intel Validation Engineering, and general manager of the Intel Israel Development Center.

"We have a strong DCAI [data center AI] team that will continue to advance our priorities in service to our customers," the company said in an emailed statement. "We are grateful for Justin Hotard's contributions and wish him the best in his new role."

Intel's data center unit has struggled to regain the market share it has lost to Nvidia and AMD. Intel, which once dominated the market, missed the shift to high-powered GPUs for running AI models and applications, primarily in the data centers of cloud providers and hyperscalers.

For several years, Intel's networking business has worked closely with Nokia. The Intel unit offers Xeon processors, Ethernet network adapters, network interface cards and silicon photonics.

In 2021, Nokia launched MX Industrial Edge, a low-latency, on-premises cloud-to-edge architecture that used Intel CPUs in its server component. In 2024, Nokia introduced energy-efficient 5G networks using Intel Xeon chips and power management software. The same year, Nokia launched the Digital Automation Cloud platform that used Intel's 5G-enabling technology to provide private high-speed networks for small industrial sites.

"From Nokia’s point of view, they are getting much more insider visibility into Intel than before," Jack Gold, principal analyst at J. Gold Associates, said of Hotard. "And, since AI is a key requirement of networks going forward, Hotard's AI experience as it relates to networks that he honed at Intel will be quite useful."

For Intel, Hotard leaves while the company prepares to roll out critical products. The company recently canceled its hybrid CPU-GPU codenamed Falcon Shores to focus on a GPU-only product called Jaguar Shores. The latter would compete with Nvidia and AMD in the AI data center. Intel hasn't said when it will release Jaguar Shores, which analysts don't expect until after this year.

In the second half of this year, Intel plans to release Panther Lake, its next-generation mobile processor manufactured on Intel's advanced 18A process. The chip will test the ability of Intel's manufacturing subsidiary, Foundry, to make chips in volume using the new method.

Before joining Nokia, Lundmark led various companies over 20 years, including Hackman, a cutlery and cookware company; Konecranes, a maker of cranes and lifting equipment; and Fortum, a Finnish energy company.

"I have led listed companies for more than two decades, and although I do not plan to stop working, I want to move on from executive roles to work in a different capacity, such as a board professional," he said in a statement.

Antone Gonsalves is an editor at large for Informa TechTarget, reporting on industry trends critical to enterprise tech buyers. He has worked in tech journalism for 25 years and is based in San Francisco. Have a news tip? Please drop him an email.