Dayton microelectronics firm introduces new CEO
Niobium Microsystems Inc. has announced the appointment of a new chief executive and president — and a new partnership with a Silicon Valley business incubator.
Kevin Yoder, who also will serve as a board member, will be Niobium’s president and CEO, the company said.
Niobium is based in Dayton with seven Ohio employees. Niobium is a 2021 spinout from Galois Inc. and sister-company to downtown Dayton tech firm Tangram Flex.
“Yoder brings decades of leadership experience and is well suited to continuing the growth and success of Niobium’s service and product lines, which focus on the development of secure microelectronics for critical systems,” the company said in a new release.
“Kevin brings a perfect combination of strategic vision around our R&D efforts and success in bringing microelectronics products to market,” said Rob Wiltbank, Niobium chairman. “We see a future where computing on encrypted data becomes truly accessible based on custom hardware for Fully Homomorphic Encryption, making true privacy the norm.”
Trusted microelectronics is a strong Department of Defense priority.
“Niobium has already established itself as a leader in FHE and the market is getting significant attention from both customers and investors,” said Yoder. “I am honored to lead our incredibly talented team as we continue to serve our growing customer base which requires innovative and secure microelectronics design.”
Most recently Yoder was the head of sales and marketing at Lantronix, a company focused on hardware and software for IoT (or Internet of Things) markets.
Also, Niobium said it has been accepted as the most recent portfolio company to join the Silicon Catalyst incubator. Silicon Catalyst is the only incubator focused solely on accelerating early-stage semiconductor hardware companies, Niobium said.
“Niobium is a pioneer in FHE, combining the development of novel hardware and software to create a powerful approach to addressing the important issue of keeping data encrypted at all times, and therefore private,” said Nick Kepler, chief operating officer of Silicon Catalyst. “Their team has tremendous strengths and we believe the Silicon Catalyst ecosystem possesses the complementary strengths to help them achieve success.”