China’s No 2 chip foundry Hua Hong names former Intel veteran as new president
Bai has over 30 years of semiconductor fabrication experience and previously held executive positions at various chipmakers, including Intel
China’s Hua Hong Semiconductor, the country’s second-largest chip foundry, has hired a former Intel veteran as its new president amid a management reshuffle.
The Shanghai-based chipmaker, which specialises in mature node technology, said in a stock filing on Thursday that it hired Intel’s former global vice-president Bai Peng, 62, as its new president on a three-year contract. Bai will take over the president’s role from Tang Junjun, who will remain chairman and executive director of Hua Hong Semiconductor.
Bai has over 30 years of semiconductor fabrication experience and previously held executive positions at various chipmakers, including US chip giant Intel. Bai attended China’s prestigious Peking University and later received his bachelor’s degree in physics in 1985 from the University of Bucharest, Romania. He earned his doctorate in physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York State, according to his official biography.
Bai was recently chief executive at Rong Semiconductor (Ningbo) Co, a foundry producing image sensors, power management chips, and display drivers using mature node technology from 28-nanometre to 180-nm. Before that, he held positions at Intel as process integration engineer, yield engineering director, R&D director and vice-president, and then global vice-president, according to the filing.
The appointment of Bai comes just weeks after Hua Hong began operating a new plant in Wuxi, a city in Jiangsu province near Shanghai. It also follows the move by Hua Hong Group, the state-owned parent of Hua Hong Semiconductor, to appoint Qin Jian as new chairman to replace Zhang Suxin, who had served in that role since 2016.
The management reshuffle comes as the Chinese semiconductor industry faces new headwinds, with the US launching a trade investigation into China’s production of legacy semiconductors – a key focus area for Hua Hong.
Hua Hong Group ranked as the sixth-largest global foundry in the third quarter of 2024, driven by demand from local chip design companies. Its market share for the quarter was 2.2 per cent, down from 2.6 per cent in the same period a year earlier, according to data from Taiwanese IC research company TrendForce.
