Chris Gladwin (engineer)

Chris Gladwin is an American computer engineer and entrepreneur, who has founded or co-founded a series of tech related companies.

This article is about engineer and entrepreneur. For the cricketer, see Chris Gladwin.

Career

Gladwin has a degree in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[1][2] He created the first "workgroup storage server" while working for Zenith Data Systems, before moving on to manage storage at Lockheed Martin.[3] He has founded or co-founded a series of tech related companies including:

  • Cruise Technologies, founded in the 1990s, and maker of wireless tablet computers[4]
  • MusicNow, founded in 1998, which reached a customer base of 100,000 customers before being sold to Circuit City[5][6] Details of the sale were not disclosed.[7]
  • Cleversafe, founded in 2004 and sold to IBM $1.3 billion in 2015[8]
  • Ocient, co-founded in 2016, and which raised $10 million in series A funding[9][10][11]

Patents and awards

He is the author of more than 300 issued and pending patents.[12] He has also been the recipient of at least 16 industry awards for his work.[6]

Philanthropy

In 2015 Gladwin donated $7.6 million to Illinois Institute of Technology, for which he sits on the board of trustees.[13] He serves on the board of a number of other organizations, including the Museum of Broadcast Communications, SmartBet Charities, the Chicago Innovation Awards as well as the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center.[14] He sits on the steering committee for the Illinois Business Immigration Coalition.[15]

See also

References
  1. "What Is Chris Gladwin up to After Selling Cleversafe for $1.3 Billion? Building Ocient to Revolutionize Big Data Analytics". Tech in Chicago. Retrieved 20 March 2018.
  2. Graham, Meg; Elahi, Amina (2015-10-05). "IBM to acquire Chicago cloud-storage firm Cleversafe". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 2018-03-20.
  3. "Big Data: A Workshop Report. Appendix CSpeaker Biographies". National Center for Biotechnology Information. Retrieved 20 March 2018.
  4. MacArthur, Kate. "Chris Gladwin: Why starting a tech company might be a marathon instead of a sprint". The Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 20 March 2018.
  5. Rogers, Bruce (2014-03-19). "Chris Gladwin's Cleversafe Seeks To Lead the 100+ Petabyte Storage Market". Forbes. Retrieved 2018-03-20.
  6. "S. Christopher Gladwin". Kellogg School of Management. Retrieved 20 March 2018.
  7. Fritz, Ben (April 4, 2004). "Circuit City buys MusicNow". Variety. Retrieved 20 March 2018.
  8. Batterson, Leonard A.; Freeman, Kenneth M. (2017-07-05). Building Wealth Through Venture Capital: A Practical Guide for Investors and the Entrepreneurs They Fund. John Wiley & Sons. pp. vii. ISBN 9781119409359.
  9. Graham, Meg (2016-06-27). "His last company sold for more than $1B. Now Chris Gladwin is hiring again". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 2018-03-20.
  10. Rekdal, Andreas (2018-01-25). "Loyalty, talent, ambition: Why Chris Gladwin is doubling down on Chicago". Built In Chicago. Retrieved 2018-03-20.
  11. "Chicago Tech Veterans Close $10 Million Series A For Big Data Startup Ocient - Crunchbase News". Crunchbase News. Retrieved 2018-03-20.
  12. Jordan, Robert (2012-11-12). "The New Patent Law: End of Entrepreneurship?". Forbes. Retrieved 2018-03-20.
  13. Marotti, Ally (December 10, 2015). "Cleversafe founder Chris Gladwin donates $7.6M to IIT". The Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 20 March 2018.
  14. "Chris Gladwin Founder and Vice Chairman of Cleversafe". Illinois Institute of Technology. Retrieved 20 March 2018.
  15. "IBIC Steering Committee". Illinois Business Immigration Coalition. Retrieved 20 March 2018.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.