Intel CEO on global chip shortage: 'We still have some rough road in front of us'

In a new interview with Yahoo Finance anchor & Editor-at-Large Brian Sozzi, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said the global chip shortage has reached its nadir. While he predicts it will gradually improve, he also said the shortage will persist into 2023.

Video transcript

- How long does this chip supply shortage, which you mentioned is a crisis, how long does that continue?

PAT GELSINGER: Yeah, our-- you know, with or without the Chips Act, we think we still have some rough road in front of us. And I've said, you know, we believe the chip shortage is at its worst right now. It will get incrementally better as we go through '22, but we expect the shortage to persist into '23. It just takes that long to build capacity.

Now, you know, if the Chips Act doesn't pass, if the European act doesn't pass, we think the slope of the recovery dampens. You know, if it passes, I'm announcing our next fab, right? I mean, I am-- you know, shovels go into ground more rapidly if this gets put into place. So let's get it done at that level so that we can, you know, increase the slope of the recovery more rapidly.

But it's also, as Winston Churchill said, never waste a good crisis. You know, if we come out of this and we haven't created the environment for a more geographically balanced supply chain, and we become more dependent on Asia, right, you know, how terrible, right, you know, that we haven't really fixed the problem. And as we well know, some of these areas in the world are very geopolitically unstable.

You know, let's build back better, right, as the Biden campaign included in its political process, build back in the way that we want these to occur. The Chips Act is critical. We want these fabs on American and European soil, and we're ready to step up, build bigger and faster, right, with the investments of the government.