Co-founder Jitendra Mohan’s Astera Labs Rides AI Boom
Jitendra Mohan, CEO and co-founder Astera Labs
March 20, 2024
Astera Labs, a Santa Clara, California, based company provided a boost to private companies waiting to list on U.S. stock exchanges. Astera, whose stock began trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange today, closed at $62, a one-day gain of 72% above its listing price.
Astera provides hardware and software to build and connect Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud computing infrastructure. Customers include Amazon and semi-conductor chip makers Nvidia, Intel and AMD.
”We provide connectivity solutions to provide AI connectivity in the cloud…Our products enable the brains (of Chat GPT and other AI products) to talk to each other very fast, very reliably,”Jitendra Mohan, co-founder and Chief Executive of Astera told CNBC.
“Astera Labs continues to surpass every milestone for a technology start-up, and we are now deep into the next stage of evolution for our company as we accelerate growth,” Mohan said in a statement in November 2022. At that time the company raised funds in a private funding round, backed by Fidelity and other major investors, at a valuation of $3.2 billion.
In 2023, Astera had revenues of $116 million, up from $80 million in 2022. It lost money in both years. Yet, today it raised $604 million in the public listing. The listing tripled its value in 18 months to $9.5 billion. Investors expect the company to soon earn large profits as its revenues grow exponentially.
Astera is riding a boom in demand for AI products sparked by Microsoft’s introduction of Chat GPT in November 2022. Astera’s stock benefitted from a growing investor frenzy over AI companies, led by Nvidia, whose stock, valued at $2.3 trillion, has risen more than 600% since November 2022.
Astera’s name, which means “star-like” was inspired by astronomy. The company was co-founded in 2017 by Mohan and four others who earlier worked at Texas Instruments, a semiconductor company based in Dallas, Texas, with a market value of $157 billion.
Most technology startups founded by Indian engineers in the U.S. have focused on software products. In contrast, Astera, co-founded by Indian Americans Mohan and Sanjay Gajendra, supplies semi-conductor chips and other hardware, along with the software required to operate them.
Mohan, 50-years-old, served as a Product Line General Manager at Texas Instruments, from 2012 to 2017; and in various technical roles at National Semiconductor, from 1996 to 2012, including as a Design Director.
Mohan earned a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
Another co-founder of Astera is Sanjay Gajendra, 49, President and Chief Operating Officer. From 2017 to 2020, he served as the startup’s Chief Financial Officer. Earlier, like Mohan, Gajendra was a Product Line General Manager at Texas Instruments from 2014 to 2017, having joined the company as a Director of Product Management in 2012. From 2000 to 2011, Gajendra was at National Semiconductor, including as a product manager.
From 1996 to 2000, Gajendra was a Senior Software Engineer at Wipro, which is a Bangalore based information technology company. Gajendra holds a Master’s degree in Engineering Management from the University of Colorado Boulder, 2005. Neither Astera’s documents nor Gajendra’s LinkedIn profile list where he earned his undergraduate degree.
Following Astera’s public listing, Mohan’s stock holdings in the company is worth nearly $800 million while Gajendra owns stock worth around $550 million.
Mohan told CNBC that AI is in the early stages of development, “I believe we have a decade of growth ahead of us. We can even go back to the steam engines replacing horse carriage.”
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