Our mission is to help you achieve outstanding
AI performance and efficiency, from cloud to edge,
with low total cost of ownership (TCO).
Esperanto delivers high-performance, energy-efficient computing solutions that are the compelling choice for the most demanding AI and non-AI applications. The changing, computationally intensive workloads of the machine learning era mandate a new clean-sheet solution, without the baggage of existing legacy architectures, or the programmability limitations of overspecialized hardware. Esperanto leverages the simple, elegant, open standard RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA) to deliver flexibility, scalability, performance and energy-efficiency advantages.
We're helping hardware and system designersbuild the next generation of Al solutions
EXECUTIVE TEAM
A leadership team with vision and experience.
Our executive team includes Silicon Valley veterans with deep technology backgrounds who share a commitment to deliver world class computing solutions for the AI industry.
Art Swift
President and CEO
Art has 30 plus years of executive-level experience in the tech and microprocessor industry, including as CEO at low power processor chip maker Transmeta, as president of MIPS, a leading provider of microprocessor IP, as CEO of Wave Computing, a pioneer in dataflow computing architectures, as well as CEO of nanotech innovator Unidym. Previously, Art served in executive-level positions at Cirrus Logic, Digital Equipment’s Alpha processor group, and Sun Microsystems, one of the pioneering companies in networked computing and RISC processing.
Art Swift
President and CEO
Dave Ditzel
Founder, CTO and Board Member
A well-known entrepreneur and visionary in the computer and semiconductor industry, Dave was founder and CEO of Transmeta, maker of low power x86 microprocessors, raising over $600M from startup to a $6B IPO. Dave co-authored “The Case for RISC,” along with professor David Patterson. Previously, Dave was a vice president at Intel Corporation, leading advanced processor projects, and CTO at Sun Microsystems for the SPARC Technology Business. After earning a degree in Electrical Engineering and a separate degree in Computer Science, Dave did his graduate work at U.C. Berkeley under professor David Patterson.
Dave Ditzel
Founder, CTO and Board Member
Udi Kalekin
VP of Software Engineering
Udi brings more than 30 years of experience spanning both technology innovation and business, with a focus on embedded software and software development tools. He has led multi-national software and tools teams in startups as well as established companies. At NXP, Udi headed the compiler and tools team, and later NXP’s advanced automotive many-core architecture and tools technology team. Earlier, he managed a global compiler group at Freescale. Udi served as VP of Software at MIPS Technologies, rebuilding the software team, as well as initiating and driving the Android-on-MIPS effort. Previously, he worked on compiler software at Intel. He was educated at Technion, Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.
Udi Kalekin
VP of Software Engineering
Lee Flanagin
Chief Business Officer
An experienced marketing, sales, and business development executive, Lee’s industry experience includes AI, semiconductors, IP, cloud, consumer electronics, networking, and storage, spanning startups to Fortune 500 companies. Lee has advised on corporate strategy, marketing, sales, ecosystem partnerships and business development for several AI chip startups focused on datacenter and edge applications. Previously, he was Chief Business Officer / Senior Vice President at Wave Computing; Advisor in the Office of the CTO at Cisco, Head of Worldwide Corporate Communications at SanDisk, Head of Corporate Communications at RAE Systems by Honeywell, and Vice President, Worldwide Corporate Communications at ARC International. Lee received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Michigan State University.
Lee Flanagin
Chief Business Officer
Ralph Harms
Chief Financial Officer
As a high-growth technology company CFO, Ralph has directed finance teams for US, European and Asian pre-IPO and publicly traded companies spanning semiconductors, IoT, enterprise and applications software, IT and telecommunications, and more. His expertise in global financial operations, IPO and merger exits, strategic planning and equity financing helped raise $900M public and $510M venture capital equity, and he has led five IPOs. Ralph attended Stanford University Law School Directors’ College and holds an MBA in Finance from the University of Michigan and a BS EE/CS from Michigan State University.
Ralph Harms
Chief Financial Officer
Darren Jones
VP of VLSI Engineering
Darren has 25 plus years of processor design and verification experience. As VP of Engineering at Wave Computing, he was responsible for the successful tapeout of a novel 16nm CGRA chip for Machine Learning as well as the second generation 7nm design. Prior to that, he held engineering leadership positions at Xilinx, and at MIPS Technologies, driving successful SOC tapeouts and processor IP development. Darren received a BSEE from the University of Illinois and an MSEE from Stanford University. He has co-authored more than 20 patents.
Darren Jones
VP of VLSI Engineering
Jin Kim
Chief Data Scientist
An executive, entrepreneur, and data scientist, Jin’s experience spans enterprise software products and services in AI, big data, and advanced analytics. He has led multinational engineering and marketing teams at both established and startup companies, including GraphSQL, Wave Computing, Objectivity, Skytree, Tom Sawyer Software, Vitria Technology, Tactica, and Trimeter Technologies. Jin’s focus encompasses markets for machine learning and deep learning, data management, integration, analytics and visualization, and mobile and cloud computing. He was the evangelist and technologist behind more than 60 innovative products, from concept to revenue. Jin earned his PhD in Computer Science and Engineering and BS in Electrical Engineering at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Jin Kim
Chief Data Scientist
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
- Dave Ditzel Founder, CTO and Board Member
- Art Swift President and CEO
- Geoffrey Baehr Chairman, Almaz Capital
- Tong XieDecent Capital
In quotes.
“Esperanto has taken the opposite approach to competitors’ giant power-hungry chip accelerators, offering a lower-power chip that can be used in multiples.”
SALLY WARD-FOXTON, EETIMES
“All in all, Esperanto is moving in the right direction for completing the RISC-V ecosystem. The lower cost and growing selection of RISC-V solutions, coupled with a rapidly growing software ecosystem, represent a real and viable alternative to ARM.”
DAVID SCHOR, WIKICHIP FUZE
“I had the chance to watch a demo of the platform and came away quite impressed with the performance and power efficiency of the RISC-V based platform. I was also pleased to see that the Esperanto device is not a one-trick pony, as the team demonstrated Resnet50, DLRM, and the Transformer network underlying BERT.”
KARL FREUND, FORBES
“Our data science team was very impressed with the initial evaluation of Esperanto’s AI acceleration solution. It was fast, performant and overall easy to use. In addition, the SoC demonstrated near-linear performance scaling across different configurations of AI compute clusters. This is a capability that is quite unique, and one we have yet to see consistently delivered by established companies offering alternative solutions to Esperanto.”
DR. PATRICK BANGERT, VP OF AI, SAMSUNG SDS
“Yes, I’ve seen the RISC-V light. Chief protagonist in my conversion was the high priest of microprocessor design himself, Dave Ditzel.”
JIM TURLEY, EE JOURNAL
“The motivation for Esperanto is that there is no RISC-V alternative to high end ARM processors. Without that, it is hard for many companies to make an architectural switch…”
PAUL MCLELLAN, BREAKFAST BYTES BLOG, CADENCE
“Intel Foundry Services is excited to add Esperanto’s massively-parallel AI accelerators to the IFS ecosystem. The combination of Esperanto’s low-power design techniques and IFS advanced silicon and packaging technologies should enable thousands of Esperanto’s RISC-V based processors to operate in a single package with remarkably low power.”
BOB BRENNAN, VP, GM, IFS CUSTOMER SOLUTIONS ENGINEERING
“Esperanto has achieved an industry first by demonstrating its massively parallel RISC-V silicon running a variety of real-world AI workloads. It was exciting for me to see the company put the chip through its paces across a variety of scenarios including different models, data types, batch sizes and compute cluster combinations – all showing competitive results. This is another positive step forward for the RISC-V industry in the AI space as this new market continues to grow even faster than we had previously forecasted.”