Andreas Bechtolsheim

Andreas Bechtolsheim — Sun Microsystems co-founder

Andreas “Andy” Bechtolsheim built the path-breaking SUN workstation while working as a doctoral student at Stanford in computer science and electrical engineering. He later became co-founder and chief system architect at Sun Microsystems.

He also was CEO and a founder of Granite Systems, a gigabit Ethernet switching company, from 1995 to 1996, when it was acquired by Cisco Systems. He managed Cisco’s Gigabit Systems Business Unit responsible for the highest-volume modular switching platform in the industry.

Bechtolsheim’s technology foresight is legendary. He was an early-stage investor in Google, VMware, Mellanox, Brocade and Magma Design, among many others. Today he is co-founder and chairman of Arista Networks, a high-speed datacenter and cloud networking company.