Intel announced Thursday that Brian Krzanich, its CEO since 2013, has resigned his position. The resignation follows the revelation that Krzanich had a "past consensual relationship" with a company employee, which violated Intel's non-fraternization policy for managers.
Krzanich had worked for Intel for his entire professional life, starting in 1982.
Robert Swan, the company's chief financial officer and the former CFO of eBay, will step in immediately as interim CEO. Intel's board, the company said, has a "robust succession planning process in place," and is searching for a permanent CEO.
Apple and Intel have been close partners since Steve Jobs switched the Macintosh CPU to Intel x86 processors starting with the products released in 2006. Intel does not make the processors for the iPhone, but it does supply the modems.
The change in leadership at Intel comes at a time when Apple is reportedly considering dropping Intel chips from Macs starting in 2020, and taking chip production in-house. However, a report in June stated that Apple could use Intel's high-performance discrete graphics chips in future Macs. And a May report stated that Intel's modems for the iPhone could eliminate the need for Qualcomm chips, as soon as this year's models.
In early 2014, Krzanich said in an interview that Intel and Apple's relationship was growing closer.
"We've always had a very close relationship with Apple and it continues to grow closer," Krzanich said in a Reddit "Ask me Anything" session "Sure (it's) grown close over the years, especially since... they started to use our technology in their systems."
A year later, in response to another round of rumors about Apple taking its chip production in-house, Krzanich expressed confidence that Intel could keep innovating in order to keep Apple's business.
"Our job is to continue to deliver parts that have that capability, that are better than our competitors, and then they want to use our parts," he told CNBC.
