Intel Hires GPU Veteran Eric Demers, Bolstering AI Efforts

Late last week, semiconductor industry trackers were astonished by Intel's fresh recruitment of Eric Demers. Until very recently, the seasoned GPU architect had spent almost fourteen years at Qualcomm—ending this spell as senior vice president of engineering. On Friday (January 16), Devers announced this major change—a short story mentioned multiple meetings (in 2025) with Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan. He confirmed, in a private LinkedIn message (sent to CRN), that he would be starting work at Intel within the next week. Complete details of his new job description—chez Team Blue—were not shared with the American computer publication. Instead, a small hint was dropped—according to the CRN article, Devers expects to "lead GPU engineering with a focus on AI." Looking back in the TechPowerUp news archive, one historical section of Dever's career trajectory was brought forth. In early 2012, he moved on from his Corporate VP & CTO role at AMD's graphics division. At the time, official statements did not mention his intention to join Qualcomm's Adreno GPU department. Prior to his tenure at ATI/AMD, Devers spent time at Silicon Graphics (SGI), Matrox, and then joined a team of former SGI-ers at start-up ArtX. ATI Technologies acquired ArtX almost three years after the latter's founding date. One of Devers' final projects at Qualcomm seems to be the Windows PC-focused Snapdragon X2 Series. Industry experts anticipate the ex-"other Red Team" engineering executive becoming a key figure at Intel's fairly new "AI Group"—this independent entity could be chasing major enterprise rivals; most notably NVIDIA. Team Blue introduced its "Crescent Island" AI data center accelerator a few months ago. A next-gen successor—dubbed "Jaguar Shores"—is reportedly expected to be "design complete" by the middle of 2026. Sources: CRN News, Wccftech, Tom's Hardware, TrendForce, Haze2K1 Tweet Related News 1 Comment on Intel Recruits Eric Demers - Veteran GPU Architect Could be Part of New AI Group #1 ZoneDymo Meh intel has Tom Peterson, thats plenty, also AI? ewwww Posted on Jan 20th 2026, 12:58 Reply