Founders' Biographies 1-3

Amir Nayyerhabibi
President & Chief Executive Officer

Amir Nayyerhabibi co-founded Cortina Systems in June 2001 with the vision of building the next great semiconductor company, focused on removing infrastructure bottlenecks and delivering efficient bandwidth across the network. As President, CEO and Board of Directors member, Amir enabled Cortina's stellar growth by raising over $200M in equity financing and acquiring four companies. In 2004, Cortina acquired Azanda Network Devices, a fabless semiconductor company in the traffic management domain, recognized as one of the "Startups to Watch" by the Fabless Semiconductor Association in 2002. In 2006, Cortina acquired Intel's Optical Networking Division, and kick-started an industry consolidation that is now underway.

In 2007 and 2008, Cortina entered the passive optical networking market through the acquisition of Immenstar, and the digital home market through the acquisition of Storm Semiconductor.

Prior to Cortina Amir and his co-founding team engaged in creating a boutique semiconductor fund call SFO ventures that led to creation of Cortina. While at Cisco Systems, Amir was senior director of engineering in charge of the GSR12000, Cisco's flagship router His team delivered the most powerful router platform in the industry. While at Cisco, he also helped to build Auroranetics, founded on investment from Raza Ventures and Kodiak Ventures.

Amir has been a serial entrepreneur. His first company, StratumOne, founded in 1998, was funded by two venture rounds from Sequoia, IVP and Brentwood. At StratumOne, Amir built and managed the engineering team. He also acted as COO until just before the company's acquisition by Cisco Systems in 1999.

Before StratumOne, Amir held senior executive positions in three companies developing state- of-the- art microprocessors: Silicon Graphics (which acquired MIPS Computer Systems), MIPS, and Intel Corporation.

At Silicon Graphics (1992 - 1997), Amir's team was responsible for multiple CPU developments, including the R4400, R8000 and R10000. At MIPS Computer Systems, Amir held various executive roles as one of the early developers of the R4000 processor which was the foundation of MIPS' successful IPO in 1991.

At Intel Corporation (1982 -1989), where Amir began his career, he was one of the key developers of microprocessors that defined Intel's successful entry into the PC market. He was part of the teams which developed the 80286, 80386 and managed the 80486 microprocessors.
Mr. Nayyerhabibi holds a Master of Science Degree in Information and Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois.