ON Partners Recruits CEO for MemryX
December 20, 2021 – ON Partners has assisted in the recruitment of Keith Kressin as the new president and chief executive officer of MemryX Inc. Leading the assignment for ON Partners were consultants Bryan Buck, Matt Mooney, and Sean Cantarella. “Since MemryX’s founding, we’ve primarily focused on building what would be a transformative technology,” said Wei Lu, co-founder of MemryX. “We saw that as the edge becomes increasingly intelligent, enterprises would need chips that are easy to program and power-efficient while providing higher throughput. Now that MemryX is ready to scale, bringing on a leader like Keith, with his depth of rich experience, will make a huge impact as we ramp our business, enter new markets and engage with more customers. He’s a superstar.”
Mr. Kressin brings more than two decades of leadership experience in the semiconductor market, most recently managing Snapdragon product development and related business lines as senior vice president and general manager of Qualcomm’s compute and cloud division. In that role, he was responsible for several of Qualcomm’s key growth initiatives, including XR (AR/VR), compute (PC/tablet), AI and gaming.
“MemryX’s compute-in-memory solutions address a great market opportunity across a number of verticals,” said Patrick Moorhead, founder of tech analyst firm Moor Insights & Strategy, “I’ve known Keith for many years and know his depth of experience and ability to deliver substantive results. I expect that with the addition of Keith as president and CEO, the MemryX leadership team will be well positioned as it advances into production at scale and customer engagement.”
Mr. Kressin, who joined Qualcomm in 2008, held a series of business, product and strategic planning roles while with the San Diego, CA-based chip giant. In those roles, he led Snapdragon roadmap planning, strategic planning, and managed all application processor technologies such as AI, GPU, CPU, camera, audio and memory. Prior to Qualcomm, Mr. Kressin spent more than eight years at Intel managing chipset products and mobile marketing.
“Over the course of my 20-plus-year career in the semiconductor industry, I’ve seen the industry transition from general processing cores such as CPUs, to more dedicated cores, such as DSPs, ISPs (cameras), CV engines, sensor hubs and most recently dedicated AI cores,” Mr. Kressin said. “Nearly every processing function is increasingly reliant on AI. AI cores need to be highly scalable, easy to program, flexible, and incredibly efficient. This is what MemryX has proven in working silicon and the company intends to be ready with production silicon in 2022. I’m thrilled to join as CEO and be given the opportunity to help MemryX grow and support customers using AI across a broad swath of industries.”
MemryX Inc. is a fabless semiconductor company that designs edge AI processing solutions powered by a proprietary compute-in-memory technology and data-flow architecture. By combining high performance and accuracy with low system power and costs, MemryX solutions are able to power AI needs for a number of industries, including auto, robotics, security, and a wide range of industrial and consumer applications. MemryX is backed by leading investors including HarbourVest, ARM IoT Fund, eLab Ventures, M Ventures, and Motus Ventures. The company is headquartered in Ann Arbor, MI.
Veteran Recruiters
With a primary focus on technology, consumer, industrial and the life science sectors, ON Partners recruits C-level and board talent for public and private companies, as well as venture capital and private equity firms. Founded in 2006, the firm’s consultants work from offices in Atlanta; Boston; Chicago; Cleveland; Dallas; Menlo Park, CA; Minneapolis; and San Francisco and New York. ON Partners was named of the one fastest growing search firms this year by Hunt Scanlon Media. The firm is now ranked as one of the 20 largest search firms in the nation.
ON Partners’ Mr. Buck specializes in enterprise technology, consumer products + services and automotive technology sectors. He serves public corporations as well as the portfolio companies of leading PE and VC firms.
Mr. Mooney, based in Atlanta, has more than 25 years of experience in executive search. He has placed over 400 executives in C-level, general management, and board leadership positions across his consulting career. The sectors he has served include technology, consumer products and services, financial and professional services, and industrial. The organizations he has partnered with include public, private equity, venture capital and growth equity. Mr. Mooney has helped build over 25 executive leadership teams at public and high growth organizations.
Mr. Cantarella is responsible for research and recruitment of candidates across several industries. He joined ON Partners from Korn Ferry Futurestep where he was a recruiter and major account manager primarily working with large multinational technology companies.
Related: ON Partners Assists Unison Software in Chief Technology Officer Search
Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; and Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media
