# Lip-Bu Tan

Lip-Bu Tan (Chinese: 陳立武; pinyin: Chén Lìwǔ; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Tân Li̍p-Bú; born November 12, 1959) is an American business executive and entrepreneur. He serves as the chief executive officer of Intel Corporation starting March 18, 2025. He also serves as chairman of Walden International, a venture capital firm. He was the longtime CEO of Cadence Design Systems from 2009 to 2021.

## Early life and education

Tan was born in 1959 in Muar, Johor, in the previous Federation of Malaya (now Malaysia) to an ethnic Malaysian Chinese family. His father was the chief editor of a Malaysian Chinese daily newspaper called Nanyang Siang Pau and his mother was a teacher. Tan was educated in neighbouring Singapore; he graduated from Nanyang University (merged with the National University of Singapore in 1980) with a Bachelor of Science degree with a major in physics. Tan then moved to the United States and completed a Master of Science in nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Tan began his doctoral studies in nuclear engineering at MIT. However, after the 1979 Three Mile Island accident and the subsequent sharp reduction in opportunities in the nuclear industry, Tan left MIT and moved to the University of San Francisco in California, where he graduated with a Master of Business Administration.

## Career

Tan was a manager at EDS Nuclear and ECHO Energy and partner at the Walden USA investment fund before founding venture capital firm Walden International in 1987. He named the firm after the book Walden by Henry David Thoreau because Tan's goal was to be like Thoreau: "contrarian, rather than just following the trend." Growing from $20 million upon its founding to $2 billion by 2001, Walden International has focused its investments on semiconductor, alternative energy, and digital media businesses and startups in the U.S. and Asia such as Ambarella Inc., Creative Technology, S3 Graphics, and Sina Corp. For Tan's breakthrough investments in Asian tech startups, Forbes dubbed Tan "the pioneer of Asian VC" in 2001.
On February 10, 2004, the Cadence Design Systems board of directors elected Tan to the board. Tan became interim co-CEO of Cadence Design Systems in October 2008, following the resignation of Michael Fister in October 2008. The Cadence board formally named Tan president and CEO effective January 8, 2009. Under Tan's leadership, Cadence grew its net worth to $1.3 billion by 2012, including $440 million in that year alone. Cadence also expanded its Shanghai office in 2012. In 2013, Cadence purchased private chip design company Tensilica for $380 million. On November 16, 2017, Tan dropped the title of president while remaining CEO of Cadence. He stepped down as CEO and became executive chairman in 2021. He stepped down from the office of executive chairman of Cadence in 2023.
In 2017, the analytics firm Relationship Science named him most connected executives in the technology industry garnering a perfect "power score" of 100.
On March 12, 2025, Tan was named CEO of Intel, effective March 18.

### Boards and memberships

From 2006 to 2011, Tan was a trustee of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Tan also served on the Regent College Board of Governors from 2006 to 2012, and on the Board of Trustees of New College Berkeley until 2013. Additionally, Tan currently directs the boards of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Schneider Electric, and Softbank and has served on the boards of Ambarella, Flextronics International, Inphi Corporation, Mindtree, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, UC Berkeley College of Engineering, and United Overseas Bank. He is also a member of the Committee of 100. Tan served as a member of the board of Intel Corporation from 2022 until 2024 when he stepped down from the board. On January 28, 2025, Celestial AI announced the appointment of Lip-Bu Tan to the Board of Directors.

### Philanthropy

In November 2019, Tan and Cadence Design Systems endowed two computer science professorships for $3 million each at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. In June 2024, Tan has pledged a gift of S$3 million to Nanyang Technology University, Singapore to set up a new professorship in artificial intelligence (AI), to attract talents and support the advancement of research and education at NTU’s College of Computing and Data Science.
In November 2024, Tan and his associates at Walden International committed an investment of S$5 million to kickstart the Nanyang Frontier Fund, a new VC fund launched by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and Walden International, to support deep tech spin-offs from the University.

## Personal life

Tan is an American citizen and lives in Piedmont, California, with his wife Ysa Loo. They have two grown children. A Christian, he adheres to Presbyterianism. Tan has also been an elder at the First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley since the 1990s.

## Awards

* August 2022: Received the Robert N. Noyce Award from the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), the industry’s highest honor.