Gelsinger said in an interview that he considered starting a venture capital firm with others but ultimately opted for a structure that was already up and running.
"It's about scale," Gelsinger said, adding that starting from scratch would take "10 grueling years."
Before joining Playground, Gelsinger made private investments in a number of startups, including church outreach software startup Gloo, wearable device maker Oura and artificial intelligence chip developer Fractile. At Playground, he will join the board of directors of portfolio company xLight, which is developing lasers for semiconductor manufacturing.
After working in the technology industry for 45 years, Gelsinger entered the venture capital industry. He is not the first former Intel CEO to enter the venture capital industry. His predecessor, Bob Swan, became a growth operating partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz in 2021, months after leaving the firm.
Artificial Intelligence and Quantum
Gelsinger said in the interview that he is looking forward to CoreWeave's stock market debut this week. CoreWeave leases Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs) to Microsoft, Nvidia and OpenAI.
“Clearly they have been able to ride the massive data center wave of AI computing,” Gelsinger said. “There are a lot of players trying to do that. They are the best at it. The question is, what is their sustainable differentiation?”
Another technology of interest is quantum computing, Gelsinger said. Unlike conventional computers that store data in an on or off state, quantum computers operate using quantum qubits, or qubits, that can be in both states at the same time. The hope among quantum bulls is that the technology might be able to perform some of the calculations that stymie today's machines.
Quantum computers will "have a significant impact on computing architecture by the end of this decade," Gelsinger said.
Gelsinger also said he extended his best wishes to his former employer and new CEO Lip-BuTan.
"I certainly believe Intel is critical to the semiconductor industry," he said. “You need to design and manufacture cutting-edge technology.”