Auditing/public research and bug bounties are not really the same category.

Famously, telegram has a bounty program- but was widely criticised for it, and for not doing a formal audit.

Criticisms here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6940665

I don’t doubt that they have more independent security analysis than just the bounty program; but using it as an argument that they’re paying people is not realistic.

Bug bounties are very different than auditing. In an audit, there is a contract in place with specific analysis objectives based on agreed-upon criteria. I find it unlikely anyone in the industry would have more experience than Intel about CPU manufacturing, although there might be security consulting firms that are advanced enough to merit a real corporate NDA. But given the breadth and depth of their IP, even that seems unlikely.

But I would still really be interested to know who Intel hires to audit their products, if this is true. I'd like to do that kind of work.

It was a Google researcher mostly.

ok, but what's the ratio of the number of Intel cpus running on something worth hacking compared to the number of amd CPUs?

Please tell me where this came from, and that it's not just something you made up?