Intel taps Seok-Hee Lee to lead foundry packaging initiative

Intel just pulled off a boomerang hire. Seok-Hee Lee, who spent a decade at the chipmaker before leaving in 2010, is coming back as executive vice president of Intel Foundry, effective June 18, 2026.

Lee will report directly to CEO Lip-Bu Tan and oversee advanced packaging, system integration, back-end technology development, and back-end manufacturing operations.

A resume built for this exact moment

During his first stint at Intel from 2000 to 2010, Lee worked on process integration across technology nodes ranging from 130-nm to 32-nm. That work earned him three Intel Achievement Awards.

After leaving Intel, Lee served as president and CEO of both SK On and SK hynix, where he played a central role in acquiring Intel’s own NAND business in 2020.

Lip-Bu Tan has publicly endorsed the appointment, calling Lee the right leader to scale this critical part of Intel Foundry’s business.

Why packaging is the new battleground

Intel has been developing two key packaging technologies that Lee will now oversee: EMIB-T and HBI. EMIB, or Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridge, connects chiplets side-by-side using a small silicon bridge embedded in the package substrate. HBI, or Hybrid Bonding Interconnect, stacks chips vertically with extremely dense connections between layers. Both technologies are critical for the kinds of chips that power AI workloads and high-performance computing.

By establishing advanced packaging as a dedicated business within Intel Foundry, the company is essentially saying: this is too important to be a department. It needs to be a business.

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