Shimpi was only 14 years old when he founded AnandTech in 1997. At that time, it used to be called Anand's Hardware Tech Page. It was hosted on a free hosting service known as Geocities. The site focused mostly on reviews of hardware such as motherboards, CPUs, video cards, cases, notebooks, Macs, smartphones, tablets and other mainstream consumer electronics products.

AnandTech began as a motherboard review site wherein Shimpi started out with reviewing more than 200 motherboards before the company hired its first motherboard editor. From reviewing motherboards, the site moved on to reviewing CPUs, video cards, storage, memory, cases, and display. The next review lineup included topics on notebooks and desktops. Since Apple has the same components that the site has been reviewing, AnandTech added Macs to its review repertoire as well. Finally, smartphones and tablets reviews were added to the list.

After almost 18 years of building the site and covering reviews, Shimpi is retiring from his post and is heading for a post in Apple. It's still unclear of what his role in Apple would be. Some have speculated that he could be in some sort of a strategy role because of his deep knowledge of Apple products.

Shimpi didn't give a definite reason for retiring. Now 32 years old, he reassured his readers that the decision of retiring is not related to health reasons or problems with the publication.

"It's important for me to stress two things: this isn't a transition because of health or business issues. I am healthy and hope to be even more so now that I won't be flying nearly 130,000 miles every year. The website and business are both extremely strong," says Shimpi.

For the past year, Shimpi had been transitioning most of his coverage areas to the other writers in AnandTech. The CPUs review is now being handled by someone Shimpi named as Ian while Josh takes care of the mobile coverage. Kristian, on the other hand, handles the entire SSD review. Shimpi feels proud of his writers and felt honored to have the opportunity to work with them. He described each of them as having more knowledge than himself about the area that they cover.  

Shimpi's role will be assumed by new editor-in-chief Ryan Smith. "Ryan has been working with us for nearly 10 years, he has a strong background in Computer Science and he's been shadowing me quite closely for the past couple of years. I am fully confident in Ryan's ability to carry the torch and pick up where I left off," adds Shimpi.