Intel might have lost a major talent with its recent moves, as the company’s core employee responsible for glass substrates and the EMIB technology has now joined rival Samsung.
Intel’s Prospects Towards Entering the Glass Substrate Segment Are Gloomy For Now, Despite Years of Lead
Team Blue has made some of the more drastic decisions with the company’s structuring and vision in recent times, which are mainly driven by a single unified goal: to reduce operating losses and increase shareholder value. Achieving this objective has brought in cancellation of optimistic projects, large-scale layoffs, and more importantly, key personalities moving from the company, and one such example is Gang Duan, who is a former principal engineer at Intel, responsible for Substrate Packaging Technology.
Over at his LinkedIn, Duan has changed his employment status, as he is now hired by Samsung as a Executive VP for Packaging Solutions, and while this is a massive upgrade for him, it does show that Intel isn’t interested in projects apart from mainstream ones, even if they could play a massive role in the company’s future. Duan has spent more than 17 years at Intel, and more importantly, was categorized as ‘Inventor of the Year’ back in 2024. Here is how his achievements are described:
In his 16 years at Intel, Duan has amassed nearly 500 patent applications in his quest to help push the envelope of how silicon dies are combined in packages — inventing better interconnects, embedding tiny connector chips within the substrate (as in Intel EMIB) and pioneering glass substrates.
We recently reported on Intel’s decision to abandon its pursuit of glass substrates in a bid to crack down on “blank checks” and ensure that investments are being paid off. For those unaware, Intel has a massive lead in glass substrates since it has been developing the technology for several years, coming ahead of competitors, based on what internal sources reported. Team Blue initially planned to integrate the technology into its packaging services by the end of 2025, whilst competitors were still figuring out the implementation.
Duan’s shift to Samsung shows that Intel’s “decades” of work towards a particular technology could very well be abandoned, and while this might benefit them in the short term, it could have serious impacts with time, especially since Intel has failed to remain competitive in any segment for now.
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