Neurophos Scales Team and Opens Silicon Valley Office to Accelerate Commercialization

Following a $110M Series A, the photonic-based AI accelerator chip pioneer is accelerating headcount growth and expanding engineering operations across Austin and Sunnyvale to scale commercialization.

AUSTIN, Texas and SUNNYVALE, Calif., Sept. 10, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Neurophos, the pioneer of metasurface-based photonic AI chips, today announced a significant expansion of its leadership and engineering teams as it prepares to commercialize the next generation of high-performance computing. Following a $110 million Series A funding round announced in January, the company has scaled its workforce by 4x this year and is on track to grow it by another 2x by year-end, drawing top-tier talent from leading semiconductor, technology, and AI research organizations.

The leadership expansion includes appointing Dr. Nathan Kundtz as CTO, promoting Dr. Michael Shebanow to SVP of Engineering, hiring Kevin Keller as General Counsel, and expanding Preston Woo's role to include CCO. These executives join Dr. Patrick Bowen, CEO and Co-Founder, on the leadership team to steer the company toward commercial deployment. The company also appointed AI accelerator pioneer Nigel Toon, former CEO and Co-Founder of Graphcore, to its Board of Directors to enhance governance and bring additional industry experience. Neurophos continues to augment its engineering and operations team as it heads toward scale production.

"The addition of these industry-leading experts and the opening of our Silicon Valley office are crucial steps in accelerating Neurophos' commercialization efforts," said Dr. Patrick Bowen, CEO and Co-Founder of Neurophos. "By scaling our team and expanding our geographic footprint, we are positioning ourselves to lead the next generation of high-performance computing and deliver on our mission to bring very large orders of metasurface-based photonic AI chips to market."

Executive and Engineering Hires

Dr. Nathan Kundtz - CTO

Dr. Nathan Kundtz brings deep expertise in metamaterial commercialization and startup scaling, having served as Founder, CTO, and CEO of Kymeta, a metamaterials-based satellite communications company, and led that company from concept to global deployment at scale. He was most recently CEO of Redered.ai, a synthetic data platform for training artificial intelligence systems. Nathan has a Master's in Electrical Engineering and a PhD in Physics from Duke University. He also founded Intellectual Ventures' Center for Metamaterials.

Dr. Michael Shebanow - SVP of Engineering

Dr. Michael Shebanow is a semiconductor veteran who has held executive roles including CEO of Silicon Bee, CTO of Sapeon, and VP at HAL, Samsung, and Cadence. His prior experience includes mobile graphics at Samsung, GPU architecture at NVIDIA, and microprocessor engineering at AMD, HAL, Motorola, and Cyrix. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC Berkeley and is an IEEE Fellow.

Preston Woo - CFO & CCO

Preston's role has expanded from CFO to include the role of Chief Commercialization Officer (CCO). This reflects his leadership in commercial engagements and partnerships. Preston was previously CFO, CSO, and Board Director of several leading technology companies. He was also an executive at Intellectual Ventures. He has an MBA from the Wharton School.

Kevin Keller - General Counsel

Kevin has more than 25 years of experience building legal infrastructure for hardware and AI, with a career spanning roles at Wilson Sonsini, Micron, Microsoft, Amazon Lab 126, Meta, and serving as General Counsel at several VC-backed startups. Kevin has a JD from NYU.

Justin Flanagan - Director of Intellectual Property

Justin has 15 years of experience practicing patent law for advanced technology companies, including in metamaterials, nanofabrication, and semiconductors. He spent the last 10 years as a Partner at PCFB, supporting hardware and deep tech startups. Justin has a JD from George Washington University.

Dr. Kristina Uhlendorf - Technical Fellow, Optics

Kristina joins from Magic Leap, where she led advanced optics development for over five years. She has decades of experience developing complex optics and has worked at leading optics companies including Carl Zeiss, Jenoptik, and Jabil Optics. Kristina has a PhD in Physics from Friedrich Schiller University in Jena.

Dr. Josh Isaacs - Director of Optics

Josh comes from Eikon Therapeutics, where he led optical engineering for the last four years. He previously conducted research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of California, Berkeley, and has a PhD in Atomic/Molecular Physics from the University of Wisconsin.

Dr. Chris Pan - Director of Board Design

Chris brings 30 years of experience to Neurophos, having led hardware engineering teams at Intel, HP, Qualcomm, Huawei, and Juniper across a wide variety of enterprise hardware products. He's spent the last 10 years building radar, lidar, and autonomy startups, including founding two of them. Chris has a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois.

Governance

Nigel Toon - Board of Directors

Nigel Toon was the CEO and Co-Founder of Graphcore, a semiconductor company and early pioneer of purpose-built processors for AI workloads. He led Graphcore through its unicorn status to its acquisition by SoftBank in 2024. Previously, he built Altera's European business, co-founded Icera (which was later acquired by NVIDIA), and served as CEO of Picochip and XMOS. He was awarded a Doctor of Science degree from the University of Bristol and wrote the book "How AI Thinks."

Expanding Footprint

To support its accelerated development timelines, Neurophos has established a new office in Sunnyvale, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. Concurrently, the company has moved into an expanded headquarters in Austin, Texas, to accommodate its growing corporate and operational footprint while maintaining its existing lab and prototyping facilities. Neurophos is also planning to open a Low-Rate Initial Production Facility (LRIP) in Austin, Texas, later this year, to enhance commercialization activities. The company is actively hiring across all engineering disciplines in both regions.

Neurophos continues to grow rapidly. Explore open roles at https://www.neurophos.com/careers.

About Neurophos

Neurophos Inc. is an Austin-based semiconductor company developing high-performance, energy-efficient photonic AI inference chips. Founded by Dr. Patrick Bowen and Dr. Andrew Traverso, the team includes industry veterans from NVIDIA, Apple, Samsung, Intel, AMD, Meta, ARM, Micron, Marvell, Mellanox, Lightmatter, and more. For details, visit www.neurophos.com.

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SOURCE Neurophos