Industry Expert Blogs

Chris Wade joined the UltraSoC Board in 2012, and following the company’s acquisition, he now shares his perspective on the company’s development and success factors

Back in 2014, the UltraSoC Board decided to hire Chris Gilbert as Chairman, following his sale of Ubiquisys to Cisco. The new Board realised the company needed a new executive team to propel the company from being a technology company with a single product offering, to one with global aspirations, a more developed product portfolio, and more customer focus. Part of this was a search for a new CEO, and in 2015 the Board hired Rupert Baines because of his deep and global industry experience from working at US-based Analog Devices, Mindspeed and Picochip.

Next came the search for a CTO who would be able to take the company forward technically. Chris Gilbert, Luke Hakes (Octopus Ventures) and I travelled to Bath to meet Rupert and he introduced us to Gajinder Panesar (Gadge) who we immediately recognized as being very smart. He had been to Cambridge and met the UltraSoC tech team and immediately had a few ideas how to take things forward technically (a massive understatement as it turned out). Gadge had very significant experience at Nvidia, Picochip, Inmos and was a design engineer at Acorn Computer the forerunner to the now world-famous Arm. Reference calls with people like Stan Boland told us all we need to know “You would be very lucky to have this superb technologist.”

By 2016, the change in management was already paying dividends: customer numbers had doubled, and UltraSoC’s global footprint was growing with a major customer win in China. Rupert and Gadge were developing a technology roadmap that would be the blueprint for the portfolio we see today, including the focus on embedded analytics, cybersecurity and safety.

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