Luminous Computing, the machine learning systems company building the world’s most powerful AI supercomputers, today announced the appointment of Michael Hochberg as President, where he is running engineering and operations. His years of experience both in photonic engineering and in building high-tech companies makes him uniquely qualified to guide Luminous’ development.
Hochberg has founded four companies, each of which have been acquired, including two acquisitions by leading telecommunications companies. He started his first company, Simulant, which offered the first purpose-built commercial tool for silicon photonics design, at the age of 19. Simulant was acquired as part of founding his next venture, Luxtera, the first company to make silicon photonics in a CMOS foundry and first to monolithically integrate transistors with silicon photonics. Luxtera was acquired by Cisco Systems in 2018 for $660,000,000.
Hochberg started Silicon Lightwave Services, later acquired by Marlin Equity Partners. He most recently was a founder at Elenion, where they commercialized 100G, 200G and 400G integrated coherent transceivers, plus 400G datacenter chipsets. Elenion was acquired by Nokia, where Hochberg served as CTO of the Optical Subsystems business.
Hochberg’s business success is matched by his academic achievements. Hochberg has held faculty positions and directed research groups at several universities, achieving tenure at the age of 32. His work has been cited over 14,000 times in the scientific literature, and his co-authored book, Silicon Photonics Design: From Devices to Systems, has been widely adopted as a textbook in the field. Internationally, Hochberg has won the top awards for young researchers: the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in the US and the NRF Fellowship in Singapore. He is a member of the TR35 Asia and is an Optica Fellow.
“Nearly everyone in the silicon photonics industry can trace their work back in some way, shape or form to the foundational work Michael has led over the past two decades. At Luminous, we focus on hiring outstanding experts; there are few people who can truly manage the complexity involved in building a new kind of supercomputer,” said Marcus Gomez, CEO and co-founder, Luminous. “Because he has been at the forefront of silicon photonics development across several generations and in multiple application spaces, Michael is the most qualified person on the planet to serve as our president.”
Hochberg joins a well-established leadership team of highly mission-driven pragmatists, including CEO and Co-Founder Marcus Gomez, and CTO and Co-Founder Mitchell Nahmias.
“The vision for silicon photonics over the past 20 years has been to integrate this technology into computer architecture, and it wasn’t until recently that silicon photonics reached the point of maturity where it’s really possible,” said Hochberg. “We’re building a supercomputer that will bring world-changing capabilities to market, offering as much as a 1,000x step function in value to the end-user, and a dramatically improved user experience. If we are successful, the technology will have a huge commercial impact. We’re also excited about the applications to defense and national security needs. Making sure that the US has asymmetric access to the best technology in the world for AI is one of the key reasons that I joined Luminous.”
This news follows the company’s emergence from stealth mode with the announcement of $105M Series A Round from investors like Gigafund, Bill Gates and more. This funding will be used to bring together the best and brightest technology minds across the globe. Hochberg is an example of the kind of proven senior talent that Luminous is recruiting to build our world-changing new computing system.