Intel Vice President of Commercial and Partner Sales for North America Jason Kimrey is resigning, company executives told sales and marketing staff. This was reported by CRN with reference to Intel partners.
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Kimrey has earned one of the best reputations in his business, Intel partners said, as an honest and caring person. Intel itself confirmed the departure of one of its most important executives, but noted that it is “transforming into a more efficient, flexible company.” Now the chip manufacturer intends to cut more than 15 thousand employees or 15% of its workforce, as well as reduce costs by more than $10 billion. Along with Kimrey, several other management members left Intel.
In particular, this is a veteran with 31 years of experience, David Allen, who served as director of sales and marketing in the United States; 9-year veteran Jennifer Bossin, director of sales for global system integrator partners; former managing director of federal systems integrators and partners in the defense industry, Kathleen Robinson, left Intel and took the post of vice president of enterprise sales at Seekr Technologies, which develops software for working with artificial intelligence and cooperates with Intel in area of Gaudi AI accelerators. Allen retired; the reasons for the departure of Bossin and Robinson could not be determined.
In February, Kimrey led Intel’s new commercial and partner sales organization in North America. The structure was created by merging the channel and partner department in the US with the departments for managing relationships with large corporate clients in the US, with communication service providers in the US, as well as with clients and partners in Canada. At the time, he said that as a result of the reorganization, the previously disparate units were able to operate as a single company and “provide the best of what Intel has to offer to the commercial market in a single key.” He had connections in the sales field, and he did an excellent job, said sources among the company’s partners.
The head of one of the distributors called Kimri’s departure unexpected and expressed concern about how Intel would be able to organize the transfer of responsibilities to employees who leave the company. Some partners are also concerned that Intel intends to cut sales and marketing expenses by $100 million this year and $300 million in the first half of next year. This will be achieved by simplifying programs and adjusting roles and responsibilities for partner funding. Intel recently rejected requests to fund sales support activities such as training and content development – notably, AMD and Nvidia are ramping up these resources. This could be a barrier to the deployment of Gaudi 3 AI accelerators, which are being positioned as a counter to Nvidia and are an important part of the company’s data center strategy.