Last month, Qualcomm quietly axed its Centriq group, driving Arm-based SoCs into data centers. It was part of a billion-dollar cost-cutting move likely to be characteristic of the company if its merger with NXP announced in October 2016 goes ahead as now expected.

The move came just a few weeks after Qualcomm escaped a hostile takeover bid from Broadcom, which would have made similar cuts. Surprisingly, management also ousted its chairman and former chief executive, Paul Jacobs, Irwin’s son.

Given all the drama, Irwin had every reason to spew invective in an interview at the Imec Tech Forum, where he received a lifetime achievement award. But deep into retirement, Jacobs is as upbeat and energetic as ever.

“You have to pull back and let people run things,” he told me. But that said, he was not without opinions.

“I was very unhappy that [Centriq] was discontinued. I would hope that it gets picked up by others. Maybe a company involving Paul and/or Sanjay [Jha, a former Qualcomm vice president recently ousted as CEO of GlobalFoundries] or others that have left will join in that kind of effort,” said Jacobs, responding to online calls for them to rescue the group.

Meanwhile, “Paul is looking to taking the company private. That’s a very difficult undertaking given the company’s size, but he’s pursuing it.”

But the elder Jacobs expressed no opinion on the effort, something that Michael Dell did with his company when it was seeking help. “My advice always is to be in a position where you can come up with new ideas and products and earn money,” he said.

Ironically, right after making billion-dollar cost cuts to appease investors, the prospects for Qualcomm’s proposed merger with NXP seem brighter. Observers say that China’s approval of the deal could come in turn for President Trump’s giving comms giant ZTE a reprieve from a fatal FTC judgement.

“I can’t predict how this will work out. It’s looking more favorable for the NXP deal now, but that could change tomorrow,” said Jacobs, recounting stories of a nearly 10-year battle to get China to license Qualcomm’s CDMA technology in the 1990s.

Jacobs expressed no anguish that the deal would change the character of the company he founded.

“I haven’t been on the inside for a long time, but past acquisitions were small and specialized. This is much larger … and it will take a large effort to integrate them, but it’s doable,” he said.

“The big problem is that the U.S. is not investing as much as it used to in R&D, universities and infrastructure. We’re losing to the competition. We don’t have enough visas so people can stay and work in the U.S. In some ways, that’s suicidal — some policies need to be revamped to let us continue the growth we’ve had.”

Specifically, Jacobs was relieved when President Trump stepped in to cancel Broadcom’s bid for Qualcomm.

“I was very worried about the direction that the company would have taken … it would have cut back on long-term projects that could have restricted our source of growth,” he said.

“Again, the larger problem is that large funds are invested for the short term and don’t tend to stay with you for the long-term view … when I was operating the company, I would talk about why we were spending on R&D, and investors tended to stay with us.”

Times have changed in the financial world. But in technology, Jacobs remains a bull.

“Wireless communications are getting better all the time, coverage is available everywhere, devices are improving, and we still have what sounds like at least two or three generations of Moore’s law ahead. Lots of good things can be done with the next 10 billion transistors,” said Jacobs, who started his career as an academic and wrote an early text on digital communications.

“I started two companies, and I didn’t have a business plan or product in mind for either of them. I figured I’d get a few bright people together, come up with some ideas, and take a few chances. Back then, we didn’t go for outside financing; we used angels — and in both cases, something good happened and we had trouble keeping up with it.”