Leadership

Mark is the CEO and Co-Founder of Ayar Labs. He led the team that designed the world's first processor to communicate using light. Mark was a research scientist at MIT and holds a PhD from MIT.

Vladimir is the Chief Technology Officer of Ayar Labs. Prior to founding Ayar Labs, he led the team that designed the world's first processor to communicate using light. Vladimir was recently a professor of EECS at UC Berkeley, and was one of the key developers of the Rambus high-speed link technology. He holds a PhD from Stanford University.

Amelia is a seasoned industry executive who joined Ayar Labs as Chief People Officer in December 2021. Her prior background includes executive roles at Hyperion Solutions, where she led a two-year turn-around of the company; Ernst & Young; Oracle; and Federal Express. Most recently, she spent almost 20 years as President of The Thornton Group, Inc., a global consulting firm working with CEOs and their teams to improve leadership performance and organization effectiveness.

Vivek Gupta is the Chief Strategy Officer at Ayar Labs, specializing in scaling breakthrough technologies across cloud infrastructure, telecom, and semiconductors. Prior to Ayar Labs, he was the Global Telco Industry Lead for Google Cloud, where he drove multi-billion-dollar impact with GenAI and B2B platform solutions. Before Google, Vivek held business leadership roles at Qualcomm, achieving market leadership for the Connected Home and Computing groups. He holds a Master's in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Tennessee and a Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kanpur.

Scott comes to Ayar Labs with extensive manufacturing, supply chain and operations senior leadership experience, including Stratalight Communications, OpNext, and AOptix. Scott has spent the past two decades leading global supply chain management, procurement, operations and manufacturing transformations for public and private companies, including work in the optical market and an extended period living and working in Asia. Scott holds a Bachelor of Computer Science degree from the University of Maryland.

Matthew joined Ayar Labs as General Counsel in June 2025. He is an established private-to-public semiconductor company general counsel and brings over twenty years of senior legal executive experience to Ayar Labs. He has served as General Counsel for both Marvell and Mellanox. He holds a BS in Economics from the University of Illinois, Urbana; a JD from the DePaul University College of Law; an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; and a Certificate in Business Analytics from Harvard Business School.

Vivek joined Ayar Labs as Vice President of Systems Engineering in July 2025 after 28 years at Marvell Semiconductor where he was the Vice President of Systems Engineering in the Custom Compute Solutions business unit. He has a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering (VLSI) from Clemson University.

Jesse was previously a managing director at Jefferies where he built and led their US/International Equities franchise in Asia Pacific, residing in both New York and Hong Kong. Jesse's focus on disruptive growth markets included AI coverage where he advised institutional investors on public and private market trends and opportunities. Before Jefferies, he worked at Deutsche Bank, and began his career at J.P. Morgan in equity research. Jesse holds a Bachelor of Arts from Hobart & William Smith Colleges and is proficient in Mandarin Chinese.

Chen is the Chief Scientist, Vice President and Co-Founder of Ayar Labs. Prior to founding this company, he led the group that designed the electronics and optical device drivers in the world's first processor to communicate using light. He holds a PhD from MIT.

Garth joined Ayar Labs in December 2019 as the Vice President of IT and Support. Before Ayar Labs, he was the Chief Digital Officer at Penguin Computing where he ran the IT, support, security and internal software development teams. He has over 20 years of experience as a business and technical leader for fast-moving, technical companies. He holds a B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Sankara joined Ayar Labs with more than 26 years of silicon engineering and product development expertise working across mobile, compute, networking and infrastructure markets, including roles at Intel, Qualcomm, and Atheros. He led multiple products and contributed to successful tape-outs at foundries including TSMC, SMIC, UMC, and Intel. At Intel he served as VP of Foundational Networking Silicon Engineering, where he led the development of Ethernet controllers and networking SOCs for hyperscale and enterprise customers.

Craig has an accomplished career as a technology entrepreneur and board member. As CEO of Atheros, he completed a successful IPO and ultimately sold Atheros to Qualcomm for $3.1B. He also served as CEO of Barefoot Networks which was acquired by Intel. In addition to his entrepreneurial career, he has held executive positions at Google, Qualcomm, and Intel, and he currently serves as the Chair of the Board for Intuitive Surgical, IonQ, and Calysta.

Pat Gelsinger is a visionary engineer and values-driven leader with over 45 years of experience as a CEO, CTO, and technologist. He has played a pivotal role in developing foundational technologies in semiconductors, microprocessors, and industry standards during his time at Intel, EMC, and VMware. Today, he is a general partner at Playground Global, a deep tech venture capital firm managing $1.2 billion in assets, as well as the executive chair and head of technology at Gloo.

Will is the Chief Investment Officer at Boardman Bay Capital Management, an asset management firm focused exclusively on the global technology sector. Boardman Bay invests across a variety of public equity and venture funds. Prior to Boardman Bay, he managed global technology sector investing at Stark Investments and Talpion Fund Management LP. He holds an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a BS, Engineering and Political Science from the United States Naval Academy.