Chris Walker of Untether AI
Untether AI announced it has appointed Chris Walker, former corporate vice president and general manager at Intel Corporation, as president. Walker joins Untether AI to manage its commercial efforts at a time when demand for AI compute is accelerating.
“Untether AI has been growing at a rapid pace and Chris brings unique experience, growing world-leading chip businesses at the highest level,” says Arun Iyengar, Untether AI CEO. “Chris’ experience in business, engineering, and architecture while focused on driving customer results makes him the ideal leader to take on Untether AI’s rapidly expanding commercial demands.”
This hire comes at a time when Untether AI has its first generation runAI-based products reaching its production ramp and the second generation speedAI devices sampling soon. At 30 TeraFlops per watt (TFlops/W) and 2 PetaFlops of performance, Untether AI’s speedAI devices set a new standard for energy efficiency and compute density delivering inference compute capabilities with dramatically reduced energy requirements. Untether AI processes AI compute workloads at least 15 times more efficiently than the state-of-the-art chips offered by GPU (graphics processing unit) manufacturers.
“I’m thrilled to be part of the company redefining AI chip architecture, the new frontier of computing,” saya Chris Walker, Untether AI president. “At a time when demand for AI compute is exploding, Untether AI is building the silicon that will power the next generation of AI workloads. From autonomous vehicles to enabling new enterprise class generative capabilities, demand for AI is an immense opportunity. This is where Untether AI’s ultra-efficient at-memory chip architecture is well-positioned to be a market leader.”
Walker joins Untether to help the company address the growing AI compute demands from the automotive, aerospace, industrial, and financial services sectors. The proliferation of large language model use-cases is also increasing demand for efficient AI compute across a range of enterprises. With an architecture that delivers energy-centric high-performance inference, Untether AI is ideally suited to accelerate AI inference applications from the edge to the cloud.
“Chris’ ability to drive palpable ambition amongst teams is admired; I am confident he will inspire a mindset of resilience and dedication at Untether AI,” says Arun Chetty, Intel Capital managing director. “As the need for AI compute expands, Chris’ vast knowledge in architecture, product management, sales and marketing, and business development will be an invaluable component in aiding Untether AI as they work to unlock the future of AI workloads.”
“Untether AI is at the forefront of creating a new approach to highly efficient AI inference solutions. This is an imperative for scaled AI customer deployments in the data center, cloud, at the edge and embedded solutions,” says Shaygan Kheradpir, senior advisor to Tracker Capital and the Technology team lead at Cerberus Capital Management. “Chris brings unique and unparalleled leadership experience in delivering innovative solutions and results at the highest levels of scale with partners.”
Walker had previously overseen Intel’s mobile client platforms encompassing SoCs, wired and wireless products. Driving P&L and strategy across engineering, products, customers, and ecosystem partnerships, he grew Intel’s largest business line to over $25 billion (€23.45 billion). Walker also led from vision through scale the transformation of laptop innovation through Project Athena and the creation of the Intel Evo platform.
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