LAS VEGAS—Chip giant Intel on Tuesday pledged to invest $300 million over the next five years to improve the diversity of the company's workforce.
"It's not good enough to say we value diversity and then underrepresent women and minorities," Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said during a keynote speech here at CES. "Intel wants to lead by example."
As part of the effort, Intel is aiming to achieve "full representation" of women and under-represented minorities within the company by 2020, including more balanced representation in senior leadership positions. The $300 million investment will be used to attract more women and minorities for engineering and computer science positions, actively support and retain those new employees, and fund programs to support more positive diversity within the larger technology and gaming industries.
"This isn't just good business, this is the right thing to do," Krzanich said.
The diversity announcement comes in light of recent events like GamerGate and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's controversial comments about women and raises. Speaking at a women's conference in October, Nadella said women should rely on "karma" instead of asking for raises, but later backtracked on his statements and promised to make changes at Microsoft to promote diversity and inclusion.
Like last year's CES keynote, meanwhile, Kraznich again discussed wearables. This year, he revealed the Intel Curie module, a small hardware product (pictured) based on Intel's first system-on-chip (SoC) for wearables. The module is scheduled to ship in the second half of this year and includes the Intel Quark SE SoC, Bluetooth low-energy radio, sensors and battery charging, Intel said.
Oakley also joined Intel on stage to discuss the company's work with the chip giant. The firms are prepping "an intelligent product" geared towards athletes, which will be available later this year.