Alexandra Wright-Gladstein
Chief Strategy Officer and Co-founder Ayar Labs
Alexandra Wright-Gladstein is a co-founder of Ayar Labs and was its founding CEO. Ayar Labs makes computers faster and more energy efficient by using light to move data between chips. Alex met her technical co-founders, the inventors of the world's first processor to communicate using light, while getting an MBA at MIT in 2014. As CEO of Ayar Labs, Alex raised the company's first $27M in venture funding, as well as several million in non-dilutive government grants, and recruited the company's current CEO, semiconductor and supercomputing industry veteran Charles Wuischpard. The company has now raised over $60M in venture funding, has over 60 employees, and is headquartered in California with offices expanding around the world. Prior to founding Ayar Labs, Alex was the Energy Entrepreneurship Practice Leader at MIT, and prior to that, she was an energy efficiency program manager and energy markets specialist at smartgrid company EnerNOC.