Enfabrica, Johan Cruyff, Silicon Valley, and a Dutchman

What do a Dutch man, Johan Cruyff, Silicon Valley, and Enfabrica have in common, you may ask?

Well, let me try...

I love coming to the Enfabrica headquarters in Mountain View here in Silicon Valley. It is filled with the smartest people in the world, passion, energy, speed, urgency, kindness, and snacks(!). ?

Let me first share some facts about Enfabrica, then I will move onto why there is a picture with quotes of my childhood hero, Johan Cruyff, accompanying this blog post. ?

We are all following the developments around ‘generative AI’. It makes the world believe that all problems will be solved. Nvidia is sold out, and the world is building datacenters at a fast pace. Many people and companies participate in the gold rush and, as we are all rushing into this, we are encountering a set of problems which are accelerating as fast as we run to the pot of gold. ?

Data center operators are struggling with how to scale compute power for AI workloads while reducing their total cost of ownership and their major impact on energy consumption and distribution. The current ‘solution’ has been to simply add more hardware, but we all know that there will be an end to stacking up GPUs and CPUs.

Let’s illustrate this area of technology with some funding numbers. Bloomberg reported last week that, this quarter, AI funding soared to $17.9 billion while all other categories slumped.

A little while ago, Enfabrica raised a $125 million Series B round led by?Atreides Management, LP?with support from existing investor?Sutter Hill Ventures, new capital from IAG Capital Partners, Liberty Global, and others including?NVIDIA. Why does Enfabrica get so much attention? Well, Enfabrica builds foundational fabrics for AI. Enfabrica offers a solution to the problem described above in the form of their Advanced Compute Fabric Switch (ACF-S) devices, which actually complement GPUs, CPUs, and accelerators by solving the challenges related to moving data at the I/O. Now, I get to work with the team at Enfabrica. As part of that advisor agreement, I get to work with Shrijeet Mukherjee, co-founder of the company. ?Shrijeet has an impressive technical background in the networking sector. He worked for the largest leading tech firms in the world and is a true visionary. On top of that, he is ‘good people’ (which, for me, these days, is VERY important in my engagements). ?

I love talking with Shrijeet. In his office, I recently found a picture of Johan Cruyff. I was flabbergasted. I did not expect to find a picture like this in a Silicon Valley office. For the people who don’t know (do they exist?). Johan Cruyff was a legendary Dutch footballer and coach who revolutionized the game with his 'Total Football' philosophy. He changed soccer forever; is considered a God in Barcelona, and there is a stadium in Amsterdam named after this legendary athlete and coach. ??

As a child, born and raised in the Netherlands, me and my brother would go to Amsterdam, buy tickets to Ajax (Amsterdam’s soccer club) in stadium ‘De Meer’ and would see Cruyff play soccer. He was a true legend, and filled the stadium with magic and energy and would turn all of us in Ajax fans. During our play time (every day!) on the streets in the Netherlands, we all claimed to be ‘Johan Cruyff’. We all wanted to be him.

In 2010, I moved to Silicon Valley. I had worked for Royal Philips, NXP, and NXP had asked me to move to the Bay Area. I had literally no clue where I was going, but I knew I was on my way. I wanted to be in the heart of ‘everything’ technology, and Mike Noonen had asked me, and he believed in me; that is all I needed.

Who would have guessed that I would eventually meet Shrijeet, at Enfabrica, in the midst of an AI goldrush, in the heart of Silicon Valley. Shrijeet knows everything about Dutch soccer. He knows all the (famous) soccer players’ names,?all the clubs, all the strategies and has told me that building hardware and software is like playing soccer (him and I will write a post about this, which will be my honor). ?

It was Steve Jobs who told students at the 2005 Stanford commencement speech that “You can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards...You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever - because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path.”?

Here I am; in the heart of Silicon Valley. I have come a long way from my great upbringing in Brabant (the south of the Netherlands). I made new friends here, I am learning new things daily, and enjoy working with people like Shrijeet and his co-founder Rochan Sankar. I am also trying to continue to connect the dots as I move forward. I enjoy every day here in this special area and am grateful for my background, my upbringing and current environment. There is lots to be grateful for, and lots to look forward to.

Happy Monday everyone!