Groq Adds Compute Veteran Stuart Pann to its Board of Directors

Originally published on HPC Wire

Today, Groq Inc. – the fast growing start-up, inventor of the Tensor Streaming Processor (TSP) architecture and new class of compute – announces that Stuart Pann will join its Board of Directors. Pann currently leads HP’s supply chain, one of the largest and most well regarded in the world, and previously led Intel’s General Management Group where he was responsible for pricing, revenue, and forecasting for the microprocessor and chipset operations.

Jonathan Ross, CEO, Groq says: “Stuart’s appointment is significant. Stuart made a name for himself as the architect of Intel’s pricing strategy, which Intel still uses today. He’s an industry luminary with a nearly 40 year proven record of driving growth throughout the compute ecosystem, including substantial senior leadership tenures at both Intel and HP.  Our customers and partners will benefit from Stuart’s immediate influence at Groq, knowing we’re advised and guided by one of their own. Stuart will be focused on accelerating Groq’s revenue and growth.”

Stuart Pann, Groq says: “I’m delighted to join the board of a company as interesting and innovative as Groq.  There’s a lot of excitement and growth, but also some hype in the AI sector right now.  When I came to understand Groq’s new architecture and saw the company’s first silicon, early customer traction, and deployment to production capability, I knew that this company had placed itself at the forefront of chip architecture innovation, with a proven execution ability to match. I’m thrilled to be a part of this exciting team. Groq is a game changer.”

In addition to Pann, Groq is announcing the addition of multiple senior industry players to its leadership team with the appointments of Adam Tachner as VP and general counsel; Bill Leszinske as VP product and marketing; and Sander Arts as strategic marketing advisor.

Adam Tachner, most recently VP and general counsel at Google Access, is a seasoned technology executive with cross-functional experience. As head of the legal, IP and key business functions at Atheros Communications he supported the company’s rapid growth, including an IPO. The company is now part of Qualcomm after a $3.6B acquisition. In addition, Adam helped position InvenSense for its 2017 sale to TDK.

Bill Leszinske brings 30 years of experience running core semiconductor business functions across CPUs, SoCs, chipsets, and memory/storage products. Bill has a strong track record of expanding and growing new businesses on a global basis.  Most recently, Bill ran strategy, product planning, marketing, and business development for Intel’s memory/storage business, which included Optane(™) Technology, helping to create new market opportunities and an ecosystem of optimized solutions for datacenter and client platforms.

Finally, expert marketing and communications executive Sander Arts has also come on board to provide strategic marketing counsel as Groq starts to make its position as a leader in AI inference known. Sander has decades of marketing experience in large public, private, and start-up companies. He has a great reputation for driving significant value and supporting growth activities, from startups such as Arduino and SiFive, to large public companies including NXP, Atmel and Marvell.

Jonathan Ross continued: “Groq’s team delivered ‘first time right’ silicon, sampled to customers within six weeks, with successful bring-up on both X86 and non-X86 customer systems. I can’t wait to see how our team will accelerate their efforts with these new additions to our leadership team. With these new hires and board addition, we’re adding significant commercial power across deal-making, fund raising, strategic planning, development, alliances, and marketing. These hires joined because they recognize that Groq has something truly unique that sets us up for significant long-term success, with an IP portfolio to match our breakthrough product roadmap.”

For more information about Groq’s new architecture, download the white paper Tensor Streaming Architecture Delivers Unmatched Performance for Compute-Intensive Workloads

About Groq

Headquartered in Mountain View, CA, Groq delivers industry leading performance, accuracy and sub-millisecond latency with efficient, software-driven solutions for compute-intensive applications. Groq redefines compute by focusing on key technology innovations: software-defined compute, silicon innovation and developer velocity. For more information, visit: https://groq.com/