Speaking to CNBC, Gelsinger said: “To me, the only metric that matters is, does it cause the building and filling of Intel fabs? If that doesn't occur, then it's not [good], right? It's a question of policy at that point.”

Despite recent fanfare about public and private money flowing into Intel’s coffers, there’s still no firm commitment from Nvidia or anyone else to actually manufacture their chips using Intel Foundry Services. Even AMD and Nvidia's CEOs have been asked point blank if they’ll commit to using Chipzilla’s fabs, and both offered the sort of evasive answers usually reserved for politicians and press-trained CEOs.

Gelsinger, who helped jump-start the IFS push with his “5N4Y” campaign and the 18A process, reckons this lack of concrete deals is a glaring gap. Without orders to back the billions being thrown around, the foundry business still looks more like a government-funded hope than a commercial powerhouse.

When asked about the CHIPS Act, meant to boost domestic chip-making, Gelsinger slammed the slow rollout under the Biden administration. He took aim at then-Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo for dragging her heels on getting funds to Intel, saying the help came too late to make the early difference he had hoped for.

Gelsinger also didn’t sugar-coat Intel’s historic screw-ups saying: “Intel made a set of bad decisions over 15 years. Lost technical leadership, wasn't led by technologists for many years… rebuilding core technology, manufacturing, supply chains, process technology.”

He called the launch of the 18A node an “important milestone,” but reminded everyone that it took five-plus years just to claw back a sliver of the company’s lost credibility.