Talking to Sanjay Mehrotra, you wouldn’t know that his company has fallen victim to a recent industry-wide semiconductor slump.

Chipmaker stocks have declined more than 10 percent so far this year and caught in that decline has been Micron Technology, Inc., whose shares are down 15.8 percent this year.

But Mehrotra, who took the helm as president and CEO last year, isn't stressing about that. He says he's focused on the future, including a new San Jose campus that allows it to hire hundreds of additional employees in the city.

Micron was founded in 1978 as a four-person semiconductor design company in the basement of a Boise, Idaho, dental office. The company went public in 2010 and this year it's celebrating its 40th anniversary.

In this week’s C-suite discussion, Mehrotra, who earlier in his career co-founded SanDisk, sat down with the Business Journal to talk about Micron's new San Jose campus, what it's like operating independent of chip giant Intel Corp., and what he sees coming from the next 40 years.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Micron recently announced its intention to buy out the IM (Intel-Micron Flash) Flash joint venture you had with Intel. That deal included a payment of about $1.5 billion in cash and taking over Intel's debt of about $1 million. What do you hope Micron gets out of this deal and what was the reasoning behind paying more than the original price it invested in the venture?

Taking ownership of that joint venture really allows Micron to operate independently and follow its roadmap of technology and products related to an exciting 3D Xpoint technology, which is an emerging memory technology for addressing the memory and storage needs of the future.

And as the AI (artificial intelligence) trends evolve, Micron's products of DRAM, of NAND and 3D Xpoint really are very much at the heart of all the trends in various market applications that are fueled by AI.

We have the option to exercise a call option to the joint venture after Jan. 1, 2019. We intend to exercise that option so that it will become totally Micron's facility. Once we exercise our option, we expect the transaction to complete any time within six to 12 months.

What are your personal highlights from the company’s history?

Micron is a 40-year-old company, but it also has a very rich tradition of corporate philanthropy. In fact, the Micron Foundation was set up in 1999 and since its inception has donated nearly $100 million. Twenty-five million of those dollars have been donated over the course of the last couple of years. We are very proud that with our presence here in Milpitas, we have engaged in several community sharing activities, not only about where Micron foundation gives to the local charities, but also volunteering by our team members in local community activities.

For example, one of the organizations we are well aligned with here in Silicon Valley is Second Harvest Food Bank. Just recently, team members and executives held a food packing competition there. We really packed tons of food there, and the winning team today, they are going to be meeting with me for the lunch, in just about half an hour from now. We'll be having that lunch at our new facility in San Jose.

There’s a lot more to Micron than just bringing innovation and technology to fuel our customers' requirements. Right now, our tag line is “40 years strong and getting stronger." I really think the best is yet to come.

How do you plan to lead the company's strategy in areas that may not be as strong? The CPU shortage caused PC makers and customers to pull back a little bit in recent quarters, which was reflected in a weaker outlook by Micron. How do you plan on keeping that strength in areas like that?

We plan to continue to focus on innovation, in terms of advancing our technology roadmap. Bringing new technologies, new products to market. We really want to continue to strengthen our cost competitiveness, with respect to those products, manufacturing cost structure, as well as continue to evolve our portfolio of solutions toward higher value solutions.

Whether you look at data centers or you look at autonomous driven vehicles of the future, or you look at the growing needs of mobile, or smartphones — all of these applications are requiring more memory and more storage. All of these applications are also being touched by artificial intelligence and machine learning in one way or another. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are in very, very early stages. We have barely seen the tip of the iceberg there. Fast memory and fast storage, is really the heart of that artificial intelligence evolution and these are the kind of products that Micron makes and will continue to make.

5 Things to know about Sanjay Mehrotra:
Age: 60
Executive Education: Stanford Graduate School of Business Executive Program
College Affiliation: Bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering and computer sciences from UC Berkeley
Board member of: Cavium, SanDisk (2011-2016)
First venture: SanDisk
Over the summer, we reported that Micron leased a 600,000-square-foot San Jose campus formerly occupied by Brocade Communications. What's the status of that move and how do you see that fitting into Micron's overall presence?

It’s a beautiful campus with three buildings and Micron has leased all three buildings. One of the buildings we will sublease to other companies and Micron itself will be growing into two of the three buildings. We are in the process of seeking all the permits for the move but we plan to begin the move later this year, and the move will be completed during the early part of next calendar year.

We have around 600 team members here in Milpitas. It will provide a great work environment for those team members, as well as provide us facilities to attract new talent because these are facilities that not only have nice looking buildings, but they also provide great amenities such as a cafeteria and gym.

What was the decision behind not staying in Milpitas and looking for a similar set up there?

We looked at various options, and it was important to us that the 600 team members that are already here at Micron move into a site that doesn't create inconvenience for them. This move is really very convenient because it's fairly near to where we currently are located.

We chose to move because we have outgrown in our current facilities and we needed bigger facilities. We looked at multiple facilities up and down the 237 corridor.  But, frankly, we wanted better facilities to suit the kind of company that we are and to provide a great working environment with tremendous environment of collaboration to our team members and be able to attract new team members as well. We will have opportunity to grow up to about 1,000 people there.

Which teams will be in the new San Jose location?

We already have a large R&D presence and we will be growing some of that R&D presence there as well. We will, of course, have our business unit teams there. We also have our functions related to our manufacturing operations team, some members of our global manufacturing operations team and some members of HR here. A lot of the R&D team here is related to non-volatile memory, flash memory storage product design.

Do you anticipate getting even more involved or trying to engage employees with more local philanthropy in San Jose?

We absolutely do. These are the kind of activities we have been increasing our focus over the course of last year or so. In fact, for this year, company-wide we have a goal of 100,000 hours of volunteering in calendar year 2018. We are well on our way toward achieving that goal with over 70,000 hours I believe already volunteered by our team members. This will become a stronger and deeper part of our culture going forward and we absolutely plan to engage even more with the local community here.

Finally, what's the best business or leadership advice you’ve ever received?

Less is more.