Leadership

“The opportunity for compute innovation is huge. MIPS cores give customers the freedom to seamlessly accelerate and expand compute power at higher density, assuring optimal performance and resource utilization. This means safer and software upgradable cars, more power-efficient data centers, and much more capable embedded systems.”

Sameer Wasson, CEO

Executive Team

Sameer Wasson

CEO

Sameer Wasson

CEO

As chief executive officer at MIPS, Sameer Wasson is leading the company’s mission of driving intelligence into action as an industry leading semiconductor solution company, focused on addressing the challenges of building next generation autonomous machines.

Prior to joining MIPS, Sameer Wasson was responsible for driving the embedded microprocessor and microcontroller business at Texas Instruments, re-establishing TI as a supplier for high-growth automotive and industrial markets, including embedded AI, software defined vehicles and electrification. Before that, he worked for TI’s Radar/mmWave Business Unit, responsible for establishing TI’s mmWave CMOS radar business focused on automotive and expanding into industrial markets. He also held a management position at Communications Infrastructure Processors at TI.

He holds a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Syracuse University and a Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics from Pune University.

Michael Jung

CFO

Michael Jung

CFO

As chief financial officer, Michael Jung is empowering the MIPS team on their mission to deliver world-class products for enhanced compute platforms to enable the realization of physical AI in automotive and industrial applications.

Michael has extensive experience in corporate finance, including mergers and acquisitions, having previously served as CFO of Luminar Semiconductor ( a subsidiary of Luminar Technologies). He has held executive leadership positions at Verigy, Advantest, Infinera, Hewlett-Packard, and Agilent, where he began his career.

He holds a Master in Business Administration from UCLA Anderson School of Management, and Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering & Operations Research from U.C. Berkley.

Rick Logsdon

CAO

Rick Logsdon

CAO

Rick Logsdon is chief administrative officer and general counsel, overseeing MIPS’ Legal, HR, IT, Facilities, and Program Management & Quality functions that support the MIPS mission for building physical AI compute.

Rick’s legal career has been split between Corporate Governance and M&A and general business support, where he’s offered counsel to business units, sales, procurement and manufacturing functions. Before joining MIPS, he served as in-house counsel to multinational semiconductor companies for over 20 years—first at Texas Instruments from 2003 – 2022, and then at Micron through 2024.

Rick holds a J.D. and master’s degree from Vanderbilt University, as well as an undergraduate degree from Hardin-Simmons University.

Brad Burgess

CPU Architecture

Brad Burgess

CPU Architecture

Brad Burgess leads the development and design of new MIPS CPU architectures for the safe, high-performance, real-time platforms required for autonomous compute.

Brad has more than three decades of semiconductor experience, including leading design teams at Samsung, where he led the design of six generations of high-end CPUs for the Galaxy flagship phones; and at AMD, where he led development of the Bobcat CPU architecture and oversaw subsequent CPUs that went into the PlayStation and XBOX. Deeply experienced in RISC-V, he previously worked at SiFive to define high-performance vector units and high-end out-of-order CPUs. He has also led several PowerPC designs at Motorola including those that went into the original iMAC and Mars Rover.

Brad holds over two dozen patents, is a member of the IEEE, and has Master and Bachelor degrees in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University

Drew Barbier

General Manager, IP Business Unit

Drew Barbier

General Manager, IP Business Unit

As head of MIPS IP Business unit, Drew Barbier drives IP platforms at MIPS, defining and driving the roadmap and development of MIPS technologies across real-time and high-performance compute and the software enablement required for physical AI platform integration.

Drew holds more than 15-years of semiconductor experience with a particular focus on the successful adoption of processor IP, beginning with Maxim as a test engineer; supporting key accounts at Arm in both technical sales and application engineering roles, and architecting ASIC solutions for Faraday. As the first member of SiFive’s ‘silicon hills’ office, Drew went on to establish their RISC-V portfolio and lead the product management team while launching multiple product families.

Drew is a Louisiana Cajun and holds a BS in Electrical Engineering and a Minor in Computer Science from Louisiana State University.

Manoj Koul

Silicon Operations

Manoj Koul

Silicon Operations

Manoj Koul drives Silicon Operations at MIPS as the backbone of the company's ability to produce high-quality, reliable, and cost-effective silicon chips, driving innovation and enabling a wide range of technological advancements.

Manoj’s career highlights include leading the launch of one of the industry’s first automotive vision and machine learning software development kits, and the Park Assist Reference Platform at Texas Instruments. He brings over more than two and a half decades of experience in video and imaging technologies, digital signal processing architectures, embedded software, machine learning, and SoC development, previously serving as chief technology officer of Iontra, Inc., where he scaled the company’s platform and products. Mr. Koul has held multiple product and leadership roles at Philips Semiconductors (now NXP), Texas Instruments, and Iontra, driving successful microprocessor, microcontroller, and software development kit roadmaps.

His work has contributed to multiple award-winning products that have shipped in millions of units globally.

Manav Mediratta

Software Management

Manav Mediratta

Software Management

Manav Mediratta leverages his experience managing cross functional product development spanning across system definition, SoC development, SW development and product validation to drive the software engineering and development function at MIPS and lead the MIPS software Center of Excellence in Bengaluru.

Before MIPS, Manav deployed his expertise in engineering management at Google, and Texas Instruments, where he held roles in the mmWave Sensor Business; Software and Systems for Wi-Fi based IoT devices for the Connectivity Business; and for GPS/GLONASS receivers and Bluetooth/FM Connectivity Combo Business. He started his career at the Telecommunications and Networking Group at Indian Institute of Technology, Madras as a Communication Systems Engineer.

Manav holds Master and Bachelor degrees in Electronics and Communication Systems.

Vasanth Waran

General Manager, Silicon Product Lines

Vasanth Waran

General Manager, Silicon Product Lines

As head of MIPS silicon product line, Vasanth Waran drives the worldwide adoption of silicon products including innovative MIPS IP platforms across automotive and industrial market segments.

Vasanth has more than 16 years experience in semiconductor business development and product management in automotive and industrial platforms, having previously worked at Renesas, Synopsys, Qualcomm, and Intel.

Vasanth is a long-time supporter of StandUp For Kids, a street outreach and housing support for transitional kids. He holds a Master of Science degree from the University of Texas at Arlington, and a Bachelor degree from the University of Madras.

Robert Ferguson

Head of Worldwide Sales

Robert Ferguson

Head of Worldwide Sales

As head of worldwide sales, Robert Ferguson is responsible for revenue growth and customer expansion, defining and executing strategic sales and marketing plans to deliver year-over-year growth.

Robert holds more than 25 years of experience in sales, marketing, and business development in the semiconductor industry, with multiple roles at Texas Instruments, Selectron, Oresis, and Intel.

Robert holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Western Oregon University.

Nasr Ullah

Architecture & Performance

Nasr Ullah

Architecture & Performance

Nasr Ullah inspires the MIPS Architecture and Performance Modeling divisions and drives them to deliver the foundational compute for physical AI in all new product designs.

With 35 years of experience, Nasr has a heritage in high-performance compute, including previously leading the team responsible for the highest-performance RISC-V processor known in 2024, from the performance architecture team then at SiFive. He has also held technical and product management roles for companies including Samsung Electronics, Freescale (now NXP), and Motorola. In his career, Mr. Ullah has built and led multiple systems and software teams including performance analysis, performance verification, performance and functional modeling, system simulation, power analysis, workload characterization, software enablement, compilers and application software for Motorola, the PowerPC Apple-Motorola-IBM Somerset Design Center, Freescale Semiconductor, Samsung Electronics, and SiFive.

Nasr serves as the executive board chair for the IEEE International Performance Conference on Computers and Communications, and holds an Executive, a Master of Science in Computer Engineering and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering degree, MBA from the University of Texas at Austin.

Board of Directors

Desi Banatao

Chairman of the Board

Desi Banatao

Chairman of the Board

Desi is the chairman of the board. He was previously also Interim CEO. Prior to assuming the CEO role, Desi led the acquisition process of MIPS from Imagination in 2017. He has a broad range of experience in early stage technology startups both as an entrepreneur and investor as one of the founding partners in Tallwood Venture Capital. Desi holds a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in Materials Science and Engineering from UC Berkeley.

Sanjai Kohli

Board Member

Sanjai Kohli

Board Member

Sanjai Kohli is recognized as the father of commercial GPS for his fundamental technology contributions to GPS and wireless communications.

He was CEO of Wave Computing until June 2021, leading the successful turnaround/restructuring effort of MIPS and its pivot RISC-V. Prior to Wave, he was responsible for technology development of the Facebook Terragraph urban connectivity network, via acquisition of his company Inovi. He was previously founder and CTO at SiRF, the company that created the commercial GPS market, from 1995 until March 2008. He also founded and successfully ran two other technology companies – WirelessHome and TrueSpan. Sanjai was awarded the European Inventor Award for making GPS a commercial product, and he holds 60 U.S. patents in GPS and communication technology. He is a graduate and distinguished alumnus of both the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and Washington University in St. Louis. He is also an IEEE Fellow.

Sameer Wasson

Board Member