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Inside Intel, employees say the famous culture gradually fell apart—and worsened the chipmaker’s downward spiral

Published

4 months ago

October 1, 2025

Intel’s employees needed some good news. The company may still boast one of Silicon Valley’s most storied names, but its staff, which numbered 96,000 as of the end of July, had worked for years through nearly uninterrupted decline, watching their company lose nearly all relevance. Though its stock price soared just before the pandemic on a data center boom, then again on an ambitious (and since abandoned) plan to expand its manufacturing business, Intel last produced truly leading-edge chips in 2017. While neighbors feasted on the AI boom, Intel couldn’t seem to find its footing.

So when employees logged on to watch a press conference on Sept. 18, anticipation was high. And finally, there was some good news to share: Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan and Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang appeared on a split screen to share the details of a surprise deal: Nvidia would be investing $5 billion into Intel, a hugely needed boost of capital and confidence from the most powerful man in business.

One senior manager, who did not want to be named as he is not authorized to speak publicly about internal matters, said his chat threads lit up. “Jensen likes us!” was the overwhelming reaction, he recalls. Many employees seemed to believe that Nvidia’s cash infusion and interest in partnering with Intel on chips, which followed investments from the federal government and SoftBank, would help save the chipmaker.

Volumes have been written about the strategic mistakes that saw Intel go from dominating the microprocessor market in the ’90s to becoming a company in need of bailing out today. Most notably, Intel missed the mobile phone revolution in the early 2000s, when then-CEO Paul Otellini turned down Apple’s request to have Intel build chips for the first iPhone. The company also missed the AI boom, having stopped making the chips that hyperscalers and AI giants like Nvidia badly need seven years ago, and ceding that market to Taiwan’s TSMC and Korea’s Samsung. (Now, America’s reliance on those two makers is seen as a serious national security threat.)

But while Intel’s strategic missteps have been pored over, less analysis has been done on the changes in corporate culture that accompanied and arguably hastened Intel’s decline. Though it can be difficult to pull apart where poor business decisions end and cultural erosion begins, the people who might know best—Intel’s past and current employees—have theories.

One thing is for sure. The company that was once known for attracting the best and brightest, largely lost that ability. “You certainly have the true believers who are hanging on, but the change in direction, the layoffs, the comp not being as good as it should be—it’s all piling up,” said one former senior manager about what he knew of the mood at Intel in August. Morale, said another former longtime employee in project management, is “in the toilet.” Intel’s famed culture, over the past few years, had deteriorated into a “heads-down, push-through situation,” he added. “That spark in people’s eyes, the desire to do this work, was not there.”

How Intel originally found that spark—then lost it—is a worthy lesson for any high-flying company about how to keep a company culture alive.

The Grovian Era

Over the past 10 years, Intel has shed tens of thousands of jobs in several waves of restructuring, but the most drastic of those cuts happened in 2024 and 2025. First, in 2024, CEO Pat Gelsinger announced a reduction of 15,000 roles, after the company’s total headcount had grown to nearly 125,000. Now, Tan, who took the CEO office in March, has said another 25,000 roles would go and that he wants Intel to emulate Nvidia’s lean, fast-moving culture.

But there was a time when speed and size were not incompatible for the tech giant.

Intel was cofounded in 1968 by two legends of the silicon industry, Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, and an investor named Arthur Rock.

Moore, who died in 2023, famously gave the world Moore’s law: the idea that the number of transistors that could be put on a chip doubles about every two years, enabling regular waves of advanced technological developments. But the leader whose imprint set the DNA for Intel’s corporate culture, and that of early Silicon Valley writ large, was Andy Grove, one of the company’s first employees, who became Intel’s third CEO in 1987 and oversaw stunning growth at the company. “He had this amazing stage presence,” said a former 30-year employee, an engineer who had also worked in operations management. “Just even being around him, he had so much energy and passion.”

Inspired by Moore’s law, Grove insisted that Intel needed to work ceaselessly to disrupt itself—“Only the paranoid survive” was one of his famous dictums—and Grove, who was born in Hungary to a Jewish family in 1936, was a survivor himself. He had concealed his Jewish identity during the German occupation of Budapest and lived under the Soviet regime before escaping to the West. The revered leader and engineering genius, who died in 2016, questioned corporate norms about top-down authority and encouraged a culture where employees were expected to challenge one another productively, a custom he called “constructive confrontation.”

A believer in flat structures and the spirit of experimentation, Grove drove employees hard, but he also set the conditions for innovation, said the former longtime employee, and Grove was known for having an idealistic streak. “Back in the old days,” the former employee said, “it was like, ‘Oh, hey, I’m creating this great thing. What do you think about it?’ ” The typical response, he recalled, would be, “ ‘Hey, that looks pretty cool. Let’s see what you can do with it. Let’s give you some money and more tools.’ ”

And when workers had to grind to hit a production target, their efforts were rewarded, sometimes with financial incentives, but also with personalized awards like silicon wafers signed by Grove. In a former era, even years after Grove stepped down, one program provided free tickets to baseball games or museums for yourself and your family. The veteran employee remembers parties to celebrate accomplishments, and being able to take time off work between big projects “to give time back to your family,” after weeks or months of absence. Intel also ran a sabbatical program that was the envy of corporate drones everywhere: Every four years, workers could take four consecutive weeks of paid leave (in addition to vacation allowances) or they could take eight weeks after seven years.

With its emphasis on competitiveness and staying on the edge of technological advancement, plus the perks, Intel was the place where graduates of top computer science schools, such as Caltech, dreamed of landing a gig. It was a company where, several employees told me, people expected to spend their entire careers.

“Saying you worked at Intel was a feather in your cap,” said the former project manager, recalling Intel’s golden era in the 1990s and the turn of this century. “The bunny suit ads and ‘Intel Inside’ campaign were everywhere. It felt great to work there. People were motivated and proud.”

But, former employees said, the vibe began to change as far back as 15 years ago.

A cultural drift

Grove stepped down as CEO in 1998 (but remained involved as chair until 2005), and was followed by Craig Barrett, who, employees who spoke to Fortune said, largely kept Grove’s vision and emphasis on technological leadership intact. (Barrett is still focused on saving Intel.) But the CEO who followed Barrett, the late Otellini, who was the company’s first non-engineer CEO, began to make changes that many say the company never recovered from. He made that fateful decision not to work with Steve Jobs at Apple; he also started the company on a path that saw its financial performance take priority over Grove’s mission to be on the cutting edge of all forms of technology.

Intel had always championed its democratic ways, where employees were expected to reach out directly to senior leadership with ideas, and their input was valued, said ex-employees. That atmosphere slowly shifted over time, beginning in the 2000s. “Everyone was telling [Otellini], ‘This is something big we need to do,’ ” the former project manager said of mobile computing. “And he was just not having it.”

Experimentation lost its shine. Awards were minimized. The veteran employee points to Bob Swan, who was CEO from 2019 to 2021, as both an effective leader with great vision, but also a penny-pincher who changed Intel by wiping away even small perks: “By the time I left, if there was even a thank-you gift card, which was really hard to get approved, it would be anywhere from $25 to $100.”

Employees also gradually saw the downtime they had between projects evaporate, leading to burnout and decreased morale. More and more, said one former employee, Intel’s workers went from being valued and celebrated contributors to the company’s goals—part of a family, several said—to cogs in a machine designed to maximize profit. That felt most true during the last 12 months, said a former public relations manager.

“Your employees are the gas in the car, the talent you have, the people you trust to get things done. They should be considered. They should be part of the strategy,” that person said. “People felt that employees were starting to be treated like assets that you could sell off or just offload. It discounts your contribution.”

Former employees said that perceived attitude colored the company’s approach to layoffs, which were given titles, said one ex-worker, such as, “Corporate People Movement.” (Intel declined to confirm or comment.) “They always had fun names for them, but it was always just people were laid off,” the project management specialist said. It’s not uncommon for big companies to name programs that involve restructuring and layoffs, but that was exactly the point, employees said. Intel had never been like other big companies.

Not only that, but Intel mishandled its layoffs, at least at first, with damaging effects. One employee recalled layoffs more than 10 years ago, in which the company marched people out the door on the day they learned they had lost their job, leaving gaps in knowledge and sowing confusion. Eventually, the company had to revert to giving employees notice.

People learned about the regular layoffs and whether their teams would be impacted at the unfortunately named Business Unit Meetings, or BUMs, the project manager said. The atmosphere was filled with the dreaded question, Am I next? The ever-present fear of being laid off over the past few years “took your head out of the game,” said another.

A reason for hope

In 2021, the mood at Intel momentarily shifted for the better, several employees told Fortune. That year, the board hired Pat Gelsinger, an engineer who had spent 30 years at Intel before leaving it for other companies and eventually running VMware.

To many, Gelsinger’s return signaled that the company was reviving the spirit of Andy Grove’s Intel. Gelsinger spent billions, and literally bet the company on its advanced 18A production process architecture, employees explained. He laid the groundwork to build new foundries, but said Intel wouldn’t see the fruits of these investments for years. “We’re going to go all in, and we are going to make it. I really liked that mentality,” said the ex-longtime employee.

Gelsinger inspired employees—even as he asked them to take a pay cut, and he scaled back the sabbatical benefit—while also keeping them informed of his vision. As one former corporate leader recalled, the chief executive was known for addressing employees weekly and engaging with their questions. Where one former CEO was taken aback by employees’ confrontational culture, and even left the stage during a town hall out of frustration, Gelsinger was at home at Intel. But the board—which included Tan—reportedly lost patience with his spending, and he was dismissed last December, replaced by interim co-CEOs until Tan took control a few months later. “For most of us, when [Gelsinger] was forced out, it was really hard on morale, like, we just couldn’t believe it. We thought that this was the guy that could potentially save the company,” said the former 30-year employee.

By contrast, Tan was less familiar to employees, though well-connected to people like Nvidia’s Huang, AMD CEO Lisa Su, and others in the semiconductor world. Tan holds a master’s in nuclear engineering, but he has long worked as an investor and business leader, and is the former CEO of Cadence Design Systems. A board member for two years, Tan was familiar with Intel’s complexity and the ongoing debate over whether to split the company up, spinning off the foundries as a separate business.

But current and former employees describe Tan as missing in action, spotted in person only once at an ice cream social, presumably designed to soften the news about a strict return to office policy. (Many see the RTO rule as another tool for culling staff.) “I haven’t seen him, even by accident,” noted a current manager, who said Tan is “invisible.”

In Tan’s very first meeting with employees, several people said, rank-and-file staffers were not shy about pushing for details around Gelsinger’s departure and expressing “salty” sentiments about Tan having quit the board in 2024, ostensibly for personal reasons, only to boomerang back, this time as CEO. Trust in the new leader is low for some. “Lip-Bu Tan did not focus on internal stakeholders, only investors and external stakeholders,” the former corporate employee said. Tan was also reportedly called out by some employees on an internal chat app for wearing a pullover branded with the logo of his former company, Cadence, during that first appearance.

In a statement, an Intel spokesperson said, “Lip-Bu is driving a cultural transformation that is critical to Intel’s future growth. We are taking steps to become a leaner, faster and more efficient company. Removing organizational complexity and empowering our engineers will enable us to better serve the needs of our customers, reignite innovation and strengthen our execution.”

In April, Tan also said on an earnings call, “Organizational complexity and bureaucracy have been suffocating the innovation and agility we need to win. It takes too long for decisions to get made. New ideas and the people who generate them have not been given the room or resources to incubate and grow. And unnecessary silos have led to bad execution. I’m here to fix this.”

One of the biggest surprise events since Tan took office happened in August, when the CEO agreed to have the U.S. government take a 10% stake in the company for $8.9 billion in funding that had already been promised to the company in federal grants. That development seemed inevitable and had long been discussed at Intel, one employee said. But it didn’t sit well with everyone. “It’s insane that the U.S. government would be owning a stake in an independent company,” said the employee in project management, just days after that deal went public. “It just seems gross, especially for people who don’t necessarily support Trump. They feel like they are now being pulled into his orbit closer than they want to be.”

“Frankly, some of the employees just don’t want to be involved with Trump in any way, shape, or form, just because it’s him,” said another former leader, who also described Intel as a little more conservative than some other tech companies, especially because it’s spread out across various geographies and includes a manufacturing business. “Our past founders have warned current leaders in the company very publicly that taking government money comes with a lot of strings attached.”

Lip-Bu Tan, chief executive officer of Intel Corp., departs following a meeting at the White House

Amid layoffs, Tan has framed a few new hires as a positive development for the company, said a former PR manager, but the message was cold comfort to those who lost their jobs. “Pretty much, the only good news he had would be to come in and say, ‘I’m bringing in some new people. They’re going to really innovate, and I trust them. I know them, and they’re going to be great for this company.’ The message the employees got was: He’s bringing in people who are going to get paid way more than you are, and you’re losing your job.”

In June, Intel also told workers that many of their jobs, especially in marketing, would be outsourced to Accenture, the IT consulting firm, which will use AI technology to replace many functions.

One month later, when Tan said that Intel would only continue investing in Intel 14A, its next-gen technology, based on customer interest, “it was such a shock to the system,” a former senior manager said. Research and development had been driven by an “If you build it, they will come” mentality. “[Tan] might be right,” the ex-manager said, acknowledging the economic pressures facing the CEO, “but it’s a big change in company philosophy.”

Now, with unconfirmed reports circulating that Intel is seeking investments from Apple and rival TSMC, his focus on external players seems understandable. Ex-employees point out that Tan has indeed been executing on the plans he described when he took over. One former corporate employee thinks that Intel still needs to develop the mindset to both compete and work collaboratively with peer companies in today’s tech ecosystem. For years, Intel has been mostly insular, and the prevailing attitude was that to be the best company, it needed to rely on itself. But that was a form of hubris. “It was part of what brought Intel into that dominance for several years,” said the ex-employee. “At the same time, it brought all the challenges that we have been seeing over the last few years.” Now that Intel has lost its status as the top destination for the brightest minds in engineering, some former workers think recruiting for Intel’s next act will be difficult. “Most people want to be part of a growth story, not a turnaround story,” said the former senior manager, “unless the turnaround has legs.” But should the company need to staff up again, it would also likely find much goodwill among its laid-off employees.

Because of the years in which Intel cultivated a strong and distinctive culture, ex-employees said, former Intel employees are networking regularly, sharing job openings, and even getting ready to launch their own businesses, while rooting for their old employer. Asked if he would go back, the veteran employee, who said he is still adjusting to his new post-Intel identity, replied, “In a heartbeat.”

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Stock market today: Dow futures tumble 400 points on Trump’s tariffs over Greenland, Nobel prize

Published

7 hours ago

January 19, 2026

Jace Porter

U.S. stock futures dropped late Monday after global equities sold off as President Donald Trump launches a trade war against NATO allies over his Greenland ambitions.

Futures tied to the Dow Jones industrial average sank 401 points, or 0.81%. S&P 500 futures were down 0.91%, and Nasdaq futures sank 1.13%.

Markets in the U.S. were closed in observance of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday. Earlier, the dollar dropped as the safe haven status of U.S. assets was in doubt, while stocks in Europe and Asia largely retreated.

On Saturday, Trump said Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland will be hit with a 10% tariff starting on Feb. 1 that will rise to 25% on June 1, until a “Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland.”

The announcement came after those countries sent troops to Greenland last week, ostensibly for training purposes, at the request of Denmark. But late Sunday, a message from Trump to European officials emerged that linked his insistence on taking over Greenland to his failure to be award the Nobel Peace Prize.

The geopolitical impact of Trump’s new tariffs against Europe could jeopardize the trans-Atlantic alliance and threaten Ukraine’s defense against Russia.

But Wall Street analysts were more optimistic on the near-term risk to financial markets, seeing Trump’s move as a negotiating tactic meant to extract concessions.

Michael Brown, senior research strategist at Pepperstone, described the gambit as “escalate to de-escalate” and pointed out that the timing of his tariff announcement ahead of his appearance at the Davos World Economic Forum this week is likely not a coincidence.

“I’ll leave others to question the merits of that approach, and potential longer-run geopolitical fallout from it, but for markets such a scenario likely means some near-term choppiness as headline noise becomes deafening, before a relief rally in due course when another ‘TACO’ moment arrives,” he said in a note on Monday, referring to the “Trump always chickens out” trade.

Similarly, Jonas Goltermann, deputy chief markets economist at Capital Economics, also said “cooler heads will prevail” and downplayed the odds that markets are headed for a repeat of last year’s tariff chaos.

In a note Monday, he said investors have learned to be skeptical about all of Trump’s threats, adding that the U.S. economy remains healthy and markets retain key risk buffers.

“Given their deep economic and financial ties, both the US and Europe have the ability to impose significant pain on each other, but only at great cost to themselves,” Goltermann added. “As such, the more likely outcome, in our view, is that both sides recognize that a major escalation would be a lose-lose proposition, and that compromise eventually prevails. That would be in line with the pattern around most previous Trump-driven diplomatic dramas.”

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Goldman investment banking co-head Kim Posnett on the year ahead, from an IPO ‘mega-cycle’ to another big year for M&A to AI’s ‘horizontal disruption’

Published

11 hours ago

January 19, 2026

Jace Porter

Ahead of the World Economic Forum‘s Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Fortune connected with Goldman Sachs’ global co-head of investment banking, Kim Posnett, for her outlook on the most urgent issues in business as 2026 gathers steam.

A Fortune Most Powerful Woman, Posnett is one of the bank’s top dealmakers, also serving as vice chair of the Firmwide Client Franchise Committee and is a member of the Management Committee. She was previously the global head of the Technology, Media and Telecommunications, among several other executive roles, including Head of Investment Banking Services and OneGS. She talked to Fortune about how she sees the current business environment and the most significant developments in 2026, in terms of AI, the IPO market and M&A activity. Goldman has been the No. 1 M&A advisory globally for the last 20 years, including in 2025 — and Posnett has been one of the star contributors, advising companies including Amazon, Uber, eBay, Etsy, and X.

Heading into Davos, how would you describe the current environment?

As the global business community converges at Davos, we are seeing powerful catalysts driving M&A and capital markets activity. The foundational drivers that accelerated business activity in the second half of 2025 have continued to improve and remain strong heading into 2026. A constructive macro backdrop — including AI serving as a growth catalyst across sectors and geographies — is fueling CEO and board confidence, and our clients are looking to drive strategic and financing activity focused on scale, growth and innovation. As AI moves from theoretical catalyst to an industrial driver, it is creating a new set of priorities for the boardroom that are top of mind for every client we serve heading into 2026.

What were the most significant AI developments in 2025, and what should we expect in 2026?

2025 was a breakout year for AI where we exited the era of AI experimentation and entered the era of AI industrialization. We witnessed major technical and structural breakthroughs across models, agents, infrastructure and governance. It was only a year ago, in January 2025, when DeepSeek launched its DeepSeek-R1 reasoning model challenging the “moats” of closed-source models by proving that world-class reasoning could be achieved with fully open-source models and radical cost efficiency. That same month, Stargate – a historic $500 billion public-private joint venture including OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle – signaled the start of the “gigawatt era” of AI infrastructure. Just two months later in March 2025, xAI’s acquisition of X signaled a new strategy where social platforms could function as massive real-time data engines for model training. By year end, we saw massive, near-simultaneous escalation in model capabilities with the launches of OpenAI’s GPT-5.1 Pro, Google’s Gemini 3, and Anthropic’s Claude 4.5, all improving deep thinking and reasoning, pushing the boundaries of multimodality, and setting the standard for autonomous agentic workflows.

In the enterprise, the conversation has matured from “What is AI?” just a few years ago to “How fast can we deploy?” We have moved past the pilot phase into a period of deep structural transformation. For companies around the world, AI is fundamentally reshaping how work gets done. AI is no longer just a feature; it is the foundation of a new kind of productivity and operating leverage. Forward-leaning companies are no longer just using AI for automation; they are building agentic workflows that act as a force multiplier for their most valuable asset: human capital. We are starting to see the first real, measurable returns on investment as firms move from ‘AI-assisted’ tasks to ‘AI-led’ processes, fundamentally shifting the cost and speed of execution across organizations.

Of course, all this progress is not without regulatory and policy complexities. As AI reaches consumer, enterprise and sovereign scale, we are seeing a divergence in global policy that boards must navigate with care. In the United States, recent Executive Orders — such as the January 2025 ‘Removing Barriers’ order and the subsequent ‘Genesis Mission’ — have signaled a decisive shift toward prioritizing American AI dominance by rolling back prior reporting requirements and accelerating infrastructure buildouts. Contrast this with the European Union, where the EU AI Act is now in full effect, imposing strict guardrails on ‘high-risk’ systems and general-purpose models. Meanwhile, the UK has adopted a “pro-innovation” hybrid model: on the one hand, promoting “safety as a service”, while also investing billions into national compute and ‘AI Growth Zones’ to bridge the gap between innovation and public trust. For our clients, the challenge is no longer just regulatory compliance; it is strategic planning and arbitrage – deciding where to build, where to deploy, who to partner with, what to buy and how to maintain a global edge across a fragmented regulatory landscape.

As we enter 2026, the pace of innovation isn’t just accelerating; it is forcing a total rethink of business processes and capital allocation for every global enterprise.

Given the expectation and anticipation for IPOs this year, what is your outlook for the market and how will it be characterized?

We are entering an IPO “mega-cycle” that we expect will be defined by unprecedented deal volume and IPO sizes. Unlike the dot-com wave of the late 1990s, which saw hundreds of small-cap listings, or even the 2020-2021 surge driven by a significant number of billion-dollar IPOs, this next IPO cycle will have greater volume and the largest deals the market has ever seen. It will be characterized by the public debut of institutionally mature titans, as well as totally disruptive, fast moving and capital consumptive innovators. Over the last decade, some companies have stayed private longer and raised unprecedented amounts of private capital, allowing a cohort of businesses to reach valuations and operational scale previously unseen in the private markets. We are no longer talking about “unicorns” — we are talking about global companies with the gravity and scale of Fortune 500 incumbents at the time they go public. For investors, the reopening of the IPO window will enable an opportunity to invest in the most transformative and fastest growing companies in the world and a generational re-weighting of the public indices.

In 2018, the five largest public tech companies were collectively valued at $3.3 trillion, led by Apple at ~$1 trillion. Today, the five largest public tech companies are valued at $18.3 trillion, more than five and half times larger. Even more significant, the 10 largest private tech companies in 2018 were valued at $300 billion. Today, the 10 largest private tech companies are valued at $3 trillion, more than 10 times larger. These are iconic, generational companies with unprecedented private market caps some of which have unprecedented capital needs which should lead to an unprecedented IPO market.

Each of these companies will have their own objectives on IPO timing, size and structure which will influence if, how and when they come to the market, but the potential across the board is significant. During the last IPO wave, Goldman Sachs was at the center of IPO innovation by leading the first direct listings and auction IPOs, and we expect more innovation with this upcoming wave. The current confluence of a constructive macro backdrop and groundbreaking technological advancements is doing more than just reopening the window; it is creating a generational opportunity for investors to participate in the companies that will define the next century of global business.

M&A activity exploded in 2025, are the markers there for another boom year?

As we enter 2026, the global M&A market has transitioned from a year of recovery ($5.1 trillion of M&A volume in 2025, up 44% YoY) to one that is bold and strategic. While the second half of 2025 was defined by a “thawing” — driven by a constructive regulatory environment, fed easing cycle and normalizing valuations — the year ahead will be defined by ambition.

We have entered an era of broad, bold and ambitious strategic dealmaking: transformative, high-conviction transactions where industry leaders are no longer just consolidating for scale, but also moving aggressively to acquire the strategic assets, AI capabilities and digital infrastructure that will define the next decade. CEO and board confidence have reached a multi-year high, underpinned by the realization that in an AI-industrialized economy, standing still is the greatest risk of all. The quality and pace of strategic discussions that we are having with our clients signals that the world’s most influential companies — across sectors and regions — are ready to deploy their balance sheets and public currencies to redraw the competitive map.

AI is no longer an isolated tech trend; it is a horizontal disrupter, broadening the appetite for strategic M&A across every sector of the economy. While the dialogue in boardrooms has moved from theoretical ‘AI pilots’ to large-scale capital deployment, the speed of technology is currently outpacing traditional governance frameworks. Boards and management teams are being asked to make multi-billion dollar, high-stakes decisions in a landscape where historical benchmarks often no longer apply. In this environment, M&A has become a tool for strategic leapfrogging — allowing companies to move both defensively to protect their core and offensively to secure the critical infrastructure and talent needed for non-linear growth. Success in 2026 will be defined by strategic conviction: the ability to turn this unprecedented complexity into a clear, actionable strategy and competitive advantage.

As AI continues to reshape corporate M&A strategy, we are also seeing financial sponsors return to the center of the M&A stage. Sponsor M&A activity accelerated sharply in 2025 — with M&A volumes surging over 50% as the bid-ask spread between buyers and sellers started to narrow, financing markets became more constructive and innovative deal structures enabled private equity firms to pursue larger, more complex transactions. With $1 trillion of global sponsor dry powder and over $4 trillion of unmonetized sponsor portfolio companies, the pressure for capital return to LPs has continued to escalate. Financial sponsors are entering 2026 with a dual-focus: executing take-privates and strategic carveouts to deploy fresh capital, while simultaneously utilizing reopened monetization paths – from IPOs to secondary sales to strategic sales — to satisfy demand for liquidity. With monetization paths reopening and valuation gaps narrowing, sponsors are entering 2026 with greater flexibility, reinforced by a healthier macroeconomic backdrop and improving liquidity conditions.

This Q&A is based on an email conversation with Kim Posnett. This piece has been edited for length and clarity.

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Half of veterans leave their first post-military jobs in less than a year—This CEO aims to fix that

Published

11 hours ago

January 19, 2026

Jace Porter

Taking a career leap can be daunting, but all professionals inevitably have to face the music; most will change jobs or industries at some point, whether they want to or not. But for U.S. veterans exiting service and heading into civilian life, the transition has been especially difficult—and it’s an issue that’s intensifying their unemployment. That’s why financial services titan USAA is putting its money where its mouth is with a $500 million initiative to get members back on their feet.

“What we created here since I took over as CEO is a completely revamped way of hiring our veterans and military spouses,” the company’s CEO, Juan C. Andrade, tells Fortune. “This is not just for the benefit of USAA—this is for the benefit of the military community.”

USAA launched its “Honor Through Action” program in 2025, committing half a billion dollars over the next five years to improve the careers, financial security, and well-being of its customers—many of whom are active military, veterans, or related to them. It’s the brainchild of Andrade, who stepped into the company’s top role in April last year. As someone who also left a longstanding career in the federal government, he understands the growing pains that come with an intimidating career pivot. And for thousands of USAA members, the situation is dire.

Around half of veterans ditch their initial post-military jobs within the first year, according to the Department of Defense’s Transition Assistance Program, and USAA’s CEO believes a lack of thoughtful transition services is largely to blame. When colonels, generals, and sergeants leave behind their high-powered jobs, Andrade says some struggle to adapt both emotionally and skills-wise.

While businesses are required to re-employ former employees who return from military duty per U.S. federal law, those stepping into civilian roles for the first time often need a helping hand. And even before they exit the military, the careers of their partners tend to suffer.

The jobless rate of military spouses has hovered around 22% over the past decade, according to Hiring Our Heroes. That’s more than four times higher than the 4.6% nationwide unemployment rate. When their partners need to relocate for a new duty assignment, spouses are 136% more likely to be unemployed within six months, according to a 2024 Defense Department survey.

This trend of low job retention among veterans and spouse joblessness can be detrimental to the financial and professional livelihoods of American military families. So Andrade is leading the charge to get them on payroll. Corporations like JPMorgan have ramped up ex-military resources, and services like Armed Forces YMCA have long been assisting veterans; But USAA’s CEO says the issue needs a more targeted approach.

“While there’s a lot of organizations that are very well-meaning and do some very good work, the approach has been fragmented,” Andrade explains. “The problem with private sector companies is [if they] have not had that experience of service, or if they don’t have a large population of employees that serve, it’s very difficult to understand the fact that they’ve lost their tribe. The fact that, in a lot of ways, they’ve lost their sense of belonging to something greater than self.”

USAA’s $500 million plan and new fellowship pathways

USAA already has several veteran employment initiatives on the docket this year. This March, the company tells Fortune it will host a nationwide U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation program, Hiring our Heroes, in San Antonio to connect on the issue. And in the coming months, USAA will host events with nonprofit and HR association SHRM to brainstorm the best ways to improve military hiring in the U.S.

In stride with Honor Through Action, USAA also launched two 18-month fellowship programs designed to transition military personnel into full-time company positions: Summit and Signal. In three six-month rotations, participants cycle through different parts of the financial services giant to find the best fit. The future leadership track, Summit, rotates fellows through departments including business strategy, operational planning, and product ownership. Starting anew can be isolating, so USAA is ensuring that military personnel are not walking these career paths alone—veterans are connected to mentors every step of the way.

“Those 18 months are incredibly important, because it goes to show you: What is it that you can do? How does a private company actually work? What is it that you do on a daily basis?” Andrade says. “They get one-on-one mentorship and support every step of the way with people that have already walked in their shoes and been successful, so all of that helps.”

And just like what other companies are looking for in white-collar talent, USAA places a special emphasis on AI-savvy workers. That’s where the Signal fellowship comes into play: the pathway targets applicants with tech know-how, cycling them between assignments including technical solutions and data processing. The CEO notes that the military community is teeming with tech skills, and some already come with prior training from U.S. Cyber Command roles. Aside from getting ex-military members back into work, Signal is also proving to be extremely beneficial for the business itself.

“We’re always looking for people who have the expertise and skill sets in data science or data engineering,” Andrade continues. “As they retire from the Air Force, the Army, the Navy, we bring them into a specialized program focused on their skills and how they can help us from technology experience.”

Serving an overlooked population: veteran spouses struggling with joblessness

Even when they’re not deployed, U.S. military personnel are battling wars at home—depression, financial insecurity, and homelessness. But one group is often ignored in the fight: their spouses. The husbands and wives of military personnel face sky-high unemployment rates and long-term instability due to the nature of their partners’ jobs. But Andrade recognizes them as an overlooked and underutilized pool of professionals.

“Military spouses are an incredible source of talent—they’re literally the CFO and the CEO of their home,” USAA’s CEO says. “When their spouses are deployed, when there’s a permanent change of station for their spouse, they have to leave their job. And if they don’t have that flexibility, then you know that’s why the unemployment rate is so high.”

USAA is funneling its resources to get to the root of the issue; as part of the Honor Through Action initiative, the company tells Fortune it will host Military Spouse Advisory Councils in San Antonio this March. The mission is to help shape policy, programs, and resources to better serve the unique needs of military families. That same month, the business also plans to work with other organizations in funding Blue Star Families’ release of Military Spouse Employment Research with the aim of pinpointing actionable solutions to their raging unemployment. And reflecting internally, Andrade reports that USAA will continue to lead by example.

“We can offer a lot of flexibility… Having that level of empathy and understanding becomes very critical,” he says. “This is where we hope—with Honor Through Action—to be able to help companies understand the value that [military spouses] have, but also why you need to treat them a little bit differently given their personal situation.”

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