AMD confirms Raja Koduri has left (is he heading to Intel?)

As was reported yesterday evening, Radeon Technologies Group head Raja Koduri is leaving AMD. After taking a personal leave of 40 days, Raja decided it was time for him to leave RTG and AMD. At least, that's the official spin, we will probably never know whether he left voluntarily or was pushed out with "a nice story" for the general public and investors.

In a message to Tom's Hardware, AMD corporate communications director Drew Prairie confirmed the news. Until a successor is found, the Radeon Technologies Group will continue be headed by AMD CEO Lisa Su. She took control of RTG since Raja went on a sabbatical.

"Earlier today, we announced two unrelated updates for our Radeon Technologies Group: 1) Raja Koduri has decided to leave AMD and 2) we are taking the next steps in our work to strengthen RTG by further focusing the organization on key growth areas.

I wanted to also make sure you understood these updates do not impact our plans or the strategic direction we are driving our graphics business. We appreciate the contributions Raja has made helping establish our dedicated graphics focus and strong team that is capable of accomplishing the ambitious goals we have set for this part of our business. Also want to make sure it is clear that there are no changes to our public product or technology graphics roadmaps, and we remain on track to deliver on our commitments in 2018 and beyond. Lisa will continue to lead RTG on an interim basis while we complete our search for a new leader.

We have made significant progress across AMD these past two years delivering the first wave of our high-performance products, best exemplified by our improved financial performance and year-over-year market share gains across all of our client, graphics and server products. Today’s changes are designed to allow us to better take advantage of the significant growth opportunities in front of us."

As expected, rumors are popping up about the next step in Raja's career. Take it with a grain of salt but WCCF Tech claims they heard from sources close to the related companies that Raja will soon be landing a position at Intel. The site suggests Raja may provide tremendous value to Intel for the Core+Radeon synergy as well as AI chip efforts.