Former Intel Corp. Chief Executive Brian Krzanich has made the surprising decision to renew his career with a little-known company called CDK Global LLC that sells technology to dealerships.

The company builds products such as an e-commerce platform and financial management software to resellers in the agriculture, automotive, construction, heavy truck and marine industries.

If you think that’s a pretty big comedown for a man who was once the leader of one of the world’s biggest, most profitable and iconic companies, well, it is. CDK Global does the bulk of its dealings with car dealers, and had annual revenue of just $2.27 billion in 2017, according to company filings. Intel, in contrast, is a $65 billion-a-year business that counts many of the world’s largest enterprises among its customers.

Nonetheless, Krzanich is said to be “energized by the chance to help grow this unique company and take it to the next level.”

The former Intel man, who was most likely forced to resign his position in June after revelations of a “past consensual relationship” with an employee came to light, signed on today as CDK’s new president and CEO, replacing Brian McDonald. He will also take a seat on the company’s board.

“In evaluating the future of CDK, the Board and Brian McDonald concluded that this is the right time to bring in a proven technology CEO to drive top-line growth,” Leslie Brun, CDK’s chairman, said in a statement.

Krzanich took over the top job at Intel back in May 2013, and initially made a good impression. He oversaw strong growth at the company, helping to double its share price over the length of his tenure.

However, things started to get a little trickier in his later years, with the company suffering from significant delays in its attempts to master its new 10-nanometer manufacturing process and build more advanced chips. Intel’s failure here was magnified by the steady progress of rival chipmakers, including Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Qualcomm Technologies Inc. and Nvidia Corp., all of which have made big advances with their own technology and have begun chipping away at Intel’s traditional markets such as personal computers and the data center.

Krzanich’s reign was also beset with problems such as the widely reported “Meltdown” and “Spectre” design flaws in many of its older central processing units that came to light last December. That caused quite a bit of disruption as the software upgrades to fix those flaws led to a degradation in the performance of Intel’s chips, seriously harming its reputation if not its bottom line.

The exact circumstances around Krzanich’s departure from Intel may never be known, but there have been reports that some top dogs at the firm weren’t totally satisfied with his performance. The “past consensual relationship” with a former employee could well have been just a convenient excuse to shoo him out of the door.

In any case, Krzanich has clearly decided to leave whatever happened in the past. “The automotive industry is undergoing changes that will impact and present opportunities for dealers, OEMs, consumers and the technology ecosystem that serves them,” he said in his statement.

Intel, meanwhile, remains stuck in an executive rut, with almost five months passing since Krzanich’s departure and no sign of a new CEO sitting in his old chair anytime soon.

Photo: Robert Hof/SiliconANGLE