Dr. Naveed Sherwani
Advsior, Global Semiconductor Group
Entrepreneur and visionary Dr. Naveed Sherwani is a well-known and respected semiconductor industry veteran with over 35 years of engineering and executive management experience. He has founded/co-founded 17 companies and raised $820M+ in funding from leading venture capital firms, which has created $3B+ in value.
Dr. Sherwani is passionate about promoting the semiconductor industry on the global stage, and has worked tirelessly to remove barriers to innovation, foster education around the world, and lead many entrepreneurs to not only launch their companies, but to achieve unicorn status.
While serving in various roles as president, CEO, or chairman, Naveed has been recognized as the leader of the “Most Respected Private Semiconductor Company” a record five times by the GSA (Global Semiconductor Alliance), the premier semiconductor industry membership body.
During his tenure as chairman, president and CEO of SiFive, he grew the company from a team of 20 worth approximately $20M to a global company with a team of over 500 worth of $2B. Naveed also co-founded a Federation comprised of four other silicon companies (StarFive, SemiFive, LeapFive, and ChinaFive). Each Federation company has a distinct strategic, regional, and vertical focus to maximize the value, creation and adoption of RISC-V. He has led eleven finance rounds, raising over $350M. The combined valuation of the Federation companies has crossed $1.3B. Naveed currently serves as the chairman of the main Federation.
In 2003, Naveed co-founded Open-Silicon, a pioneering company that reduced the cost of ownership of ASICs and greatly simplified the development process. Based on a $45M investment by prominent VC’s such as Sequoia, Norwest, and Interwest, Open-Silicon exited at $252M in a sale to a private equity group.
From 1993 to 2003, Naveed was at Intel, serving in various capacities, starting with design technology and culminating with the role of general manager of Intel Microelectronics, a division that he co-founded. A highlight of Naveed’s tenure at Intel was the design and wide deployment of Athena, which greatly improved automation of various microprocessor projects across the corporation. Naveed was a recipient of the prestigious Intel Achievement Award.
From 1988 to 1994, Naveed was a professor at Western Michigan University where he graduated several master’s and PhD students over the years. Many of his students have become famous on their own accord by founding many companies and serving in major international companies.
As a researcher and academic, Naveed focused on ASICs, VLSI, EDA, combinatorics, graph theory, and parallel computing. He has written several books including the textbook on chip design, Algorithms for VLSI Physical Design Automation, which is a standard textbook in graduate classes in most leading universities throughout the world. He has also authored over 125 technical articles on various aspects of VLSI physical design automation and ASICs, which have been published in leading publications and conferences, with several of them receiving best paper awards.
Naveed holds a PhD in computer engineering from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and an engineering degree from NED University of Engineering and Technology, Pakistan.
Visit Naveed’s LinkedIn page to learn more.
