Former CTO steps up to CEO role alongside industry veteran Geoffrey Tate as Chairman of the Board to accelerate volume deployment of silicon photonics optical circuit switches
VALENCIA, Spain and SANTA CLARA, Calif., Oct. 26, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- iPronics, a leader in silicon photonics-based Optical Circuit Switching (OCS) for AI infrastructure, today announced the appointment of co-founder and CTO Dr. Daniel Pérez-López as Chief Executive Officer.
The company also announced that board member and investor Geoffrey Tate has been appointed as Chairman of the Board. Tate brings decades of experience scaling technology from early growth through IPO to multi-billion-dollar market leadership. Tate also serves on the board of Ayar Labs, which is developing co-packaged optics.
The leadership transition follows iPronics' recent $125 million Series B funding round, which includes strategic participation from NVIDIA and premier venture capital firms. OCS is projected to grow to tens of billions by 2030 as AI data center connectivity shifts from copper to optical.
iPronics is delivering high-density, rapidly reconfigurable OCS solutions, based on photonics, to its customers including tier-1 hyperscalers and AI infrastructure providers.
"Maverick Silicon co-led iPronics' Series B based on our conviction in Daniel's exceptional technical achievements and leadership. We are confident he is the right leader to take iPronics to its next stage of growth, backed by Geoff's deep operating experience and proven track record of scaling semiconductor companies," said Manish Muthal, Senior Managing Director at Maverick Silicon.
"We invested in iPronics early on and have seen Daniel grow in experience building a world-class team for photonics technology development. We are excited to have him lead the company as we move into production," said Amelia Armour, Partner, Amadeus Capital Partners. "I would also like to thank Christian Dupont for leading the company for the last two years, culminating in our successful Series B."
To support its global commercial rollout, iPronics is scaling its advanced development center in Valencia, Spain, expanding its supply chain and operations capability in Taiwan, and building out its executive and customer-facing teams in Santa Clara, California.
ABOUT DANIEL PÉREZ-LÓPEZ
Dr. Daniel Pérez López (MSc, PhD) is a pioneer in programmable photonics and co-founder of iPronics, specializing in reconfigurable Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) that bring software flexibility to optical hardware. His foundational doctoral research at the Universitat Politècnica de València yielded world-record chip performance and led to the first experimental validation of general-purpose programmable photonics processors. His contributions earned him the IEEE Photonics Society Graduate Student Fellowship, the Extraordinary PhD Thesis Award, inclusion in ElectroOptics' inaugural Photonics100 list, the Royal Academy of Engineering Medal, and prestigious recognition as a European Research Council Grantee. Following work on quantum photonics at Xanadu Quantum Technologies in Canada, he launched iPronics-named a top high-tech spin-off by Nature Research and the EE Times Silicon 100-where he drives the development of smart optical interconnects to enable faster, scalable, and energy-efficient hardware for AI. iPronics has gained global backing from premier tier-1 VCs and strategic partners, including Maverick Silicon and NVIDIA.
ABOUT GEOFFREY TATE
Geoffrey Tate holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of Alberta and an MBA from Harvard Business School, and completed MSEE coursework at Santa Clara University. He spent 10 years at AMD running several business units, most recently as Senior Vice President of Processors. As founding CEO of Rambus, he joined at the Series A, took the company public seven years later, and led it as a public company for seven more years, reaching a multi-billion-dollar valuation. He later helped turn around and sell Nanosolar, and co-founded Flex Logix, a provider of embedded FPGA and AI technology, which Analog Devices acquired in 2024. Tate is now an investor, a strategic advisor to Light Street Capital, and a board member of Ayar Labs, a leader in co-packaged optics.
ABOUT IPRONICS
iPronics is a pioneer in optical connectivity solutions for AI data centers, delivering a rack-ready optical circuit switching (OCS) platform built on silicon photonics. Its flagship product, iPronics ONE, provides programmable optical connectivity within and across racks for dynamic AI infrastructure. With integrated control, telemetry, and APIs, iPronics ONE enables real-time reconfiguration to improve GPU utilization, reduce energy consumption, and scale without costly network overhauls. Founded in 2019 as a spin-off from Universitat Politècnica de València, iPronics is backed by strategic and financial investors, including NVIDIA, Maverick Silicon, Light Street Capital, Triatomic Capital, Bosch Ventures, Catalight Capital, European Innovation Council Fund, The Tate Family Trust, Fine Structure Ventures, Build Collective, Criteria Venture Tech, Amadeus Capital Partners, and others. For more information, visit www.ipronics.com.
Media Contacts
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