I'd argue that Intel being stingy with salaries is a big part of why they're so behind here. They just don't seem to be very serious about this. Intel has made several runs at the GPU market over the years and they just keep ending up where they are. And now NVDA has such a huge advantage (software and hardware) that it just gets harder and harder (and more expensive) to overcome.

Probably Intel's best bet now would be to try to be the fab for NVDA.