Andy Bechtolsheim | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Bechtolsheim in 2012 | |
| Born | (1955-09-30)30 September 1955 (age 70) |
| Education | Technical University of Munich (BEng) Carnegie Mellon University (MEng)Stanford University (Unfinished PhD) |
| Known for | Co-founderSun Microsystems :;Arista Networks Google investor |
| Board member of | Arista Networks |
Andreas Maria MaximilianFreiherr von Mauchenheim genannt Bechtolsheim (born 30 September 1955[1]) is a German electrical engineer, entrepreneur and investor. He co-foundedSun Microsystems in 1982 and was its chief hardware designer. As of 2025,[update] he's 68th wealthiest according toBloomberg Billionaires Index andForbes with an estimated net worth of US$28.9 billion.[2]
Bechtolsheim was born atHängeberg am Ammersee, located inFinning,Landsberg, Bavaria,[3] the second of four children. The isolated house had no television or close neighbors, so he experimented with electronics as a child. His family moved toRome in 1963. Five years later, in 1968, the family relocated again, toNonnenhorn onLake Constance in Germany. At age 16, he designed an industrial controller for a nearby company based on theIntel 8008, which he then programmed inbinary code as he had no access toassemblers. Royalties from the product supported much of his education.[4]
Bechtolsheim participated in theJugend forscht competition for young researchers three times and won the physics prize in 1974. He began studyingelectrical engineering with a focus on data processing at theTechnical University of Munich, supported by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation, and graduated with anengineering degree.[5] Frustrated by the limited access to computers and dissatisfied with his studies, he moved to the United States in 1975 with the help of aFulbright scholarship[6] and earned a master's degree incomputer engineering fromCarnegie Mellon University in 1976.
In 1977, Bechtolsheim moved to Silicon Valley after receiving an internship offer fromJustin Rattner at Intel.[7] When Rattner relocated to Oregon, Bechtolsheim chose instead to enroll atStanford University as aPh.D. student inelectrical engineering. He left Stanford five years later to pursue opportunities in the technology industry.[4][8]
At Stanford, Bechtolsheim designed a powerful computer (called aworkstation) with built-in networking called theSUN workstation, a name derived from the initials for theStanford University Network. It was inspired by theXerox Alto computer developed at theXerox Palo Alto Research Center. Bechtolsheim was a "no fee consultant" at Xerox, meaning he was not remunerated directly but had free access to the research being done there. At the time,Lynn Conway was using workstations to designvery-large-scale integration (VLSI) circuits.[4]
Bechtolsheim's advisor wasForest Baskett. In 1980,Vaughan Pratt also provided leadership to the SUN project. Support was provided by the Computer Science Department andDARPA. The modular computer was used for research projects such as developing theV-System, and for earlyInternetrouters. Bechtolsheim tried to interest other companies in manufacturing the workstations, but only got lukewarm responses.[4]
One of the companies building computers for VLSI design wasDaisy Systems, whereVinod Khosla worked at the time. Khosla had graduated a couple of years earlier from theStanford Graduate School of Business withScott McNealy, who managed manufacturing atOnyx Systems. Khosla, McNealy and Bechtolsheim wrote a short business plan[9] and quickly received funding fromventure capitalists in 1982.[4] Bechtolsheim left Stanford to co-found the company,Sun Microsystems, as employee number one, with McNealy and Khosla, and withBill Joy, who had been part of the team developing theBSD series ofUnix operating systems atUC Berkeley; Bill is usually counted as the fourth member of the founding team. For a while Bechtolsheim and Joy shared an apartment inPalo Alto, California.[4]
The first product, theSun-1, included the StanfordCPU board design with improved memory expansion, and a sheet-metal case. By the end of the year, the experimentalEthernet interface designed by Bechtolsheim was replaced by a commercial board from3Com.[10]
Sun Microsystems had itsinitial public offering in 1986 and reached $1 billion in sales by 1988. Bechtolsheim formed a project code-named UniSun around this time to design a small, inexpensive desktop computer for the educational market. The result was theSPARCstation 1 (known as "campus"), the start of another line of Sun products.[11]
In 1995, Bechtolsheim left Sun to found Granite Systems, a Gigabit Ethernet startup focused on developing high-speednetwork switches. In 1996,Cisco Systems acquired the firm for $220 million, with Bechtolsheim owning 60%.[12] He became vice president and general manager of Cisco's Gigabit Systems Business Unit, until leaving the company in December 2003 to head Kealia, Inc.[13]
Bechtolsheim founded Kealia in early 2001 with Stanford ProfessorDavid Cheriton, a partner in Granite Systems, to work on advanced server technologies using theOpteron processor fromAdvanced Micro Devices. In February 2004, Sun Microsystems announced it was acquiring Kealia in a stock swap. Due to the acquisition, Bechtolsheim returned to Sun again as senior vice president and chief architect.[14][15] Kealia hardware technology was used in theSun Fire X4500 storage product.[16]
Along with Cheriton, in 2005 Bechtolsheim launched another high-speed networking company, Arastra. Arastra later changed its name toArista Networks. Bechtolsheim left Sun Microsystems to become the Chairman and Chief Development Officer of Arista in October, 2008, but stated he still was associated with Sun in an advisory role.[16]
Bechtolsheim and Cheriton were two of the first investors inGoogle, investingUS$100,000 each in September 1998. When he gave the check toLarry Page andSergey Brin, Google's founders, the company had not yet been legally incorporated. Claims that Bechtolsheim coined the name "Google" are untrue. However, he did motivate the founders to officially organize the company under that name.[17][18]
As a result of investments like these, Bechtolsheim was seen as one of the most successful "angel investors",[19] particularly in areas such aselectronic design automation (EDA), which refers to the software used by people designing computer chips. He has made a number of successful investments in EDA. In one such EDA company,Magma Design Automation, his stake was valued around $60 million.[citation needed] He was an early investor in another EDA start-up company, Co-Design Automation, which developedSystemVerilog which is used to design almost all digital hardware.
Bechtolsheim invested inTapulous, the maker of music games for theApple iPhone.[20] Tapulous was acquired bythe Walt Disney Company in 2010.[21] He joined George T. Haber, a former colleague at Sun, to invest in wireless chip company CrestaTech in 2006 and 2008.[22]
Bechtolsheim invested in all of Haber's previous startups:[citation needed] CompCore purchased byZoran, GigaPixel purchased by3Dfx and Mobilygen purchased byMaxim Integrated Products in 2008, as well asMoovweb, a cloud-based interface for mobile and computer websites in 2009.[23]
He was reportedly an early investor inClaria Corporation, which ceased operating in 2008.[24] From 2015 to 2017, Bechtolsheim invested in PerimeterX, an automated attack mitigationSaaS.[25]
Bechtolsheim received a Smithsonian Leadership Award for Innovation in 1999[26] and a Stanford Entrepreneur Company of the year award. He was also elected a member of theNational Academy of Engineering in 2000 for contributions to the design of computer workstations and high-performance network switching.
Bechtolsheim gave the opening keynote speech at theInternational Supercomputing Conference in 2009.[27]
In 2012, he was voted by IT Pros as the person who contributed most to server innovation in the last 20 years.[28]
In 2024, Bechtolsheim settledinsider trading allegations with theUnited States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), in which he agreed to pay a civil penalty of nearly $1 million, and is prohibited from serving as an officer or director of a public company for five years. The SEC accused him of misusing confidential knowledge of Cisco's proposed acquisition of Acacia Communications, stating that the illegal option trades netted over $400,000 in profits between his associate and relative, to whom he passed the information.[29]
Despite living most of his life in the US, Bechtolsheim never attempted to acquire US citizenship. He remains a German national.[30][31]
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