About ChipAgents

Walden C. (Wally) Rhines is CEO of Silvaco, an electronic design automation company, and Chairman of the Board of Qorvo, a semiconductor company focused on RF communications. He is also a member of the Boards of three private companies: Cornami, a semiconductor company focused on fully homomorphic encryption for generative AI; Caspia, a semiconductor cybersecurity company; and Pallidus, a semiconductor company producing silicon carbide.

He was previously CEO of Mentor Graphics for 25 years and Chairman of the Board for 17 years. During his tenure at Mentor, revenue nearly quadrupled and market value of the company increased 10X. Prior to joining Mentor Graphics, Dr. Rhines was Executive Vice President, Semiconductor Group, responsible for TI's worldwide semiconductor business.

Dr. Rhines has served on the boards of Cirrus Logic, QORVO, TriQuint Semiconductor, Global Logic, PTK Corp., Silvaco, Pallidus and as Chairman of the Electronic Design Automation Consortium (five two-year terms). He is a Lifetime Fellow of the IEEE.

Dr. Rhines holds a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from the University of Michigan, a Master of Science and PhD in materials science and engineering from Stanford University, an MBA from Southern Methodist University and Honorary Doctor of Technology degrees from the University of Florida and Nottingham Trent University.

In 2021, the Global Semiconductor Alliance honored Dr. Rhines, with its prestigious Dr. Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award.

Raúl is currently the CTO of Silvaco, a partner at Silicon Catalyst, an incubator for semiconductor solutions, and lectures on EDA and Machine Learning Hardware at Stanford. He was previously an advisor to Applied Materials and the CEO of Sage Design Automation acquired by Applied in 2020. He was also CEO of Nimbic, acquired by Mentor Graphics in 2014.

Raúl spent most of his career with Synopsys, where he served as Chief Technology Officer, Senior Vice President, and General Manager. Prior to joining Synopsys, he was a Director for the German National Research Center for Computer Science, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Paderborn, and a Research Staff Member at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center.

Raúl holds a B.S and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Chile, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Karlsruhe. He has published over 70 technical papers and written and/or edited three books on electronic design automation.

Raúl has contributed significantly to building the design community serving on numerous editorial, advisory and company boards. He was elected a Fellow of the IEEE in 1999 and to the board of directors of ESDA (aka EDAC, the EDA Consortium) in 2012.

Jack Harding is currently the managing partner at Harding Partners LP, an investment and business consultancy for public and private companies. He is a frequent international speaker on the topics of innovation, entrepreneurship and semiconductor trends and policies.

Previously, Mr. Harding was the founding CEO of eSilicon Corporation, an ASIC (custom chip) and IP supplier that Inphi acquired with certain assets sold simultaneously to Synopsys. Prior to co-founding eSilicon, he was the president and CEO of Cadence Design Systems. He entered Cadence upon the acquisition of Cooper & Chyan Technology (CCT), where he served as the president and CEO, and was responsible for leading the company to an IPO. Prior to CCT, Mr. Harding served as the executive vice president of Zycad Corporation, and began his career with distinction at IBM.

Mr. Harding maintains a balanced career, providing his services to industry, academia, and government. He has held eight directorships in public corporations and currently serves on the board of directors of Qorvo. He has also served as a director and advisor to multiple private organizations. He is currently on the Board of Advisors of Alpha Design AI. Mr. Harding has also held leadership roles at Drew University and Indiana University (IU), where he was vice chairman of the board of trustees and a member of IU's premier O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA) advisory board, respectively. He is currently a Research Fellow at the Indiana University Institute for Development Strategies. Mr. Harding has also been a distinguished lecturer at the Edinburgh University Lothian Lecture Series and a Bonser Distinguished Lecturer at IU's Institute of Development Strategies, among others, including Stanford University, Max Planck Institute, and IE Business School (formerly Instituto de Empresa).

In the public policy arena, Mr. Harding has served as a member of the prestigious Steering Committee in the U.S. Council on Competitiveness and was a former National Academies' Committee member for Software, Growth and the Future of the U.S. Economy. He also served 16 years as a director for the Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA), a semiconductor industry consortium.

Harding is a co-inventor on U.S. Patent 7089449881; Method for Preparing and Using Personal and Genetic Profiles. He holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Chemistry and Economics from Drew University and attended the Stern School of Business at New York University.

Sandeep Bharathi is President of the Data Center Group at Marvell, where he leads the company's data center portfolio across Custom Cloud Solutions, Connectivity, Data Center Switch, and Cloud Optics. He also oversees Central Engineering and Data Center Engineering, aligning product development and execution across Marvell's data center business. In this role, he helps advance Marvell's strategy for delivering optimized silicon to leading cloud and AI infrastructure customers and works closely with customers on next-generation data infrastructure needs.

Previously, Sandeep led Marvell's global engineering organization as Chief Development Officer, helping scale advanced-node silicon execution and expand Marvell's custom silicon capabilities for hyperscale programs. Prior to Marvell, he held senior engineering leadership roles at Intel, Xilinx, and AMD, bringing multiple CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, SoCs, and custom silicon designs to market.

He earned a B.E. in Electronics Engineering from Bangalore University and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and completed the Stanford Executive Program.

Erez Tsur is a seasoned executive with extensive leadership experience across various technology sectors. Currently serving as CEO and Co-Founder of QualiSense, Erez is focused on enhancing visual inspections through AI technology.

Erez has held multiple significant roles, including Chairman of the Israeli Advanced Technology Industries, President and COO at Carbyne, and CEO positions at EMC Israel and Cadence Design Systems Israel, achieving substantial revenue growth and operational excellence.

Erez's contributions to the Israel Innovation Authority highlight expertise in overseeing substantial budgets and fostering innovative projects. With a background in strategic planning, fundraising, and international partnerships, Erez has consistently driven business success and innovation throughout a diverse career.

Erez holds an MBA in Risk Management from Heriot-Watt University and a BA in Communication and Computers from Bar-Ilan University.

John Bowers is a world-renowned electrical engineer and silicon photonics expert, serving as a Founding Adviser and Board Member of Alpha Design AI. As the Fred Kavli Chair and Distinguished Professor at UCSB, he has made groundbreaking contributions to silicon photonics and optical communications, holding 73 patents and authoring over 900 journal papers.

A member of the National Academy of Engineering, John has co-founded six successful companies, including Aurrion (acquired by Juniper) and Terabit Technology (acquired by Ciena), advancing high-speed fiber optic communication.

His expertise spans both cutting-edge research and commercialization, bridging academia and industry to drive semiconductor and photonics innovation. With decades of experience shaping the future of electronic and optical systems, John plays a key role in guiding Alpha Design AI's mission to revolutionize chip design and verification.

Wen Hsieh is the Founding Managing Partner of Matter Venture Partners, bringing nearly two decades of expertise in hardware technology investments and deep relationships across the global semiconductor industry. As part of ChipAgents' Series A1 investment, Wen joins the Board of Directors to help guide the company's mission to accelerate chip design through agentic AI.

Before founding Matter, Wen was a Managing Partner at Kleiner Perkins, where he led HardTech investments spanning next-generation semiconductors, enterprise infrastructure, AI, industrial IoT, autonomous vehicle technology, robotics, and energy storage. His investment focus has helped shape the future of hardware innovation across multiple critical technology sectors.

Prior to Kleiner Perkins, Wen served as Associate Principal at McKinsey & Company's San Francisco office, where he led the firm's Asia semiconductor practice, advising leading companies across the global semiconductor value chain. Early in his career, he founded OnChip Technologies, a startup developing MEMS microfluidic biochips for high-sensitivity peptide separation and identification.

Wen holds a B.S. with honors, M.S., and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Caltech, with a Ph.D. minor in Biology.

Lance is a venture partner at Bessemer Venture Partners specializing in applied AI. He led engineering for two teams at Google X innovating on AI drug discovery and computer vision for food recovery. Prior to that, he was the second engineer to join Cresta, now a unicorn startup, building language models for contact centers.

He helped start the machine learning team at Box long before the recent surge in deep learning. Previously, he bootstrapped Shared Roof Investments, a real estate company that values homes based on predicted prices and co-founded a sports analytics shop. He is currently building a company in the subscription management and optimization space.

Lance received both his master's and bachelor's degrees from Duke University, focusing on Computer Science (CS) and Electrical Engineering (EE). He dropped out of a second master's program in Applied Mathematics (ICME) at Stanford.

Daisy Cai is a General Partner at B Capital, where she invests in technology and AI companies across the United States and Asia. Her portfolio at B Capital includes Reflection AI, EvenUp Law, Apptronik, Writer.ai, Knox Systems, Kaon (formerly FlowGPT), Insilico Medicine (IPO in December 2025), GeekPlus (IPO in July 2025), Profound Bio (acquired by Genmab in 2024), Solino, and Tacta Systems, serving on the boards of several of these companies. As part of B Capital's investment in ChipAgents, Daisy joins the Board of Directors.

With nearly two decades of investment experience, Daisy was previously a Partner at SoftBank Vision Fund and held investment director roles at Goldman Sachs and TA Associates. She began her career in Silicon Valley as a chip architecture designer at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), where she authored six U.S. patents in novel chip architecture design.

Daisy holds an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Ivan's technical expertise centers on structured data, knowledge graphs, and natural language processing. He focuses on companies building vertical AI and data-intensive applications. Ivan has spent many years refining the human-in-the-loop model, pushing humans up the stack as ML techniques improve. He loves thinking and experimenting with management and organizational approaches to optimize product and software development and foster innovation.

Prior to his current role as a general partner at ScOp Venture Capital, Ivan spent ten years at Graphiq, where he built one of the largest general knowledge graphs and developed natural language understanding and generation technology. Graphiq became a leading research engine, attracting 40+ million monthly visits and generating 400 million monthly impressions of their knowledge graph across the internet.

Following Amazon's acquisition of Graphiq in 2017, Ivan led a team of 150, including software developers and knowledge engineers. The system his team developed powered Alexa's open domain question understanding and answering. The team developed solutions for natural language processing, knowledge retrieval, and language generation, while also building internal tools that enabled knowledge engineers to define complex knowledge representations and ingest billions of facts.