Venkata “Murthy” Renduchintala, Intel’s No. 2 guy behind CEO Brian Krzanich, will finally get to show the world why he’s worth $25 million when he gives a keynote at Intel’s annual Developers Conference this week.
Intel paid roughly $25 million last year to steal him from rival Qualcomm and put him in charge of the company’s PC, mobile, and Internet of Things units, essentially putting him in charge of almost every business not building data center chips.
But despite his high rank, Renduchintala has not made any public speeches for the company so far. Even internally, not many employees have seen him speak in public, according to some of the current and former employees we’ve spoken to.
That makes him one of the most mysterious but powerful executives in tech. In addition to all the business groups he controls, Renduchintala was also given a big show of support by Krzanich in April, when he told investors that Renduchintala would be in charge of reviewing the final reorganization plan, which includes a 12,000 layoff, the largest in company history.
It’s unclear what exactly Renduchintala will talk about during his keynote scheduled for Wednesday morning, but he’ll most certainly share his vision for all the businesses he runs. According to Intel’s website, Renduchintala will “discuss innovations that will drive the next revolution in technology as we shift to a truly connected world such as pervasive computing, cloud-like capabilities for compute, analytics and storage, and connectivity as the lifeblood of the Internet of Things.”
That sounds like pretty much the same message he shared in a blog post in May when he wrote about his thoughts on why he joined Intel and where he sees the company headed in the future. Perhaps a lot of people will also tune in to see his stage presence to see if he’s fit to lead Intel’s transformation, which is upsetting a lot of current and former employees.
Intel’s annual developer conference, called Intel Developer Forum (IDF), will kick off Tuesday morning with Krzanich’s keynote speech. He’s expected to discuss a wide array of things including how machine learning and drones, as well as autonomous cars fit into Intel’s broader strategy moving forward. Here are some of the biggest events taking place during IDF.
