Does Intel regret selling its flash memory business, according to CTO Pushkar Ranade?

Asked by Dwarkesh Patel about Intel's exit from memory, Pushkar Ranade said that in hindsight it was probably not the smartest time to sell the flash memory business, though there were good reasons then and nobody foresaw AI demand. He says the world will use all the compute and memory that can be made, and that the supply crunch is now larger for memory than for compute.

• Intel began as a DRAM business in the late 1960s and later sold off its memory operations, Dwarkesh Patel noted.

▸In their words

“I would argue that the supply crunch is larger for memory today than it is for compute.” Pushkar Ranade · at 1:00:05 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on Dwarkesh Podcast (2026-10-22). Read the whole episode summary →

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