Lightmatter Appoints Richard Beyer and Robin Washington to its Board of Directors

Beyer and Washington bring board experience to Lightmatter from Alphabet, Salesforce, and Micron

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Lightmatter, the leader in photonic supercomputing, today announced it has appointed Richard Beyer and Robin Washington to its board of directors. Beyer and Washington join existing board members in supporting the company’s mission to power the next generation of computing systems to further enable AI innovation.

Beyer brings over three decades of executive leadership experience across the semiconductor and telecommunications industries, and currently sits on the board of directors for Micron Technology, Inc. Previously, Beyer served as Chief Executive Officer at Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. and Intersil Corporation. He has also held prior board positions at Dialog Semiconductor, Microsemi Corporation and Analog Devices, Inc.

“While I’ve spent a large part of my career working in the semiconductor industry, the current demand for innovative compute and chip communication solutions is unprecedented,” said Beyer. “I'm eager to support Lightmatter’s vision in my new position and help the team meet the needs of the industry, accelerating what’s possible in AI innovation.”

Washington is a board member of Alphabet, Honeywell International and Salesforce. She currently serves as Chair of the leadership development, inclusion and compensation committee for Alphabet and lead independent director for Salesforce. Washington has over three decades of finance and operations experience in the technology and life sciences industries. Previously, Washington was Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Gilead Sciences, Inc. Prior to Gilead, she was the Chief Financial Officer of Hyperion Solutions, which was acquired by Oracle Corporation.

“It’s clear that the future for Lightmatter is bright – the company is uniquely positioned to fuel AI innovation across industries,” said Washington. “I am thrilled to join the board at such an exciting time in the company’s trajectory, and look forward to working with this incredibly talented team.”

“The Lightmatter team is honored to have Robin and Rich join our board as the company enters a massive growth phase enabling world-leading AI supercomputers,” said Lightmatter co-founder and CEO Nick Harris. “Rich and Robin are aligned with our vision to drive the AI industry forward with our groundbreaking photonic technologies. Their deep operating expertise will be instrumental in guiding our mission.”

About Lightmatter

Lightmatter is leading the revolution of computing, reducing impact on our planet, and enabling the next giant leaps in human progress. With the company’s photonics-enabled technologies, Lightmatter has reinvented how chips communicate and calculate. Its photonic interconnect and compute products simultaneously reduce the power consumption and increase the performance of silicon running the most advanced AI and HPC workloads.