Press Release
February 8, 2023
Niobium Microsystems Announces New President & CEO and Acceptance Into The Silicon Catalyst Ecosystem
Dayton, Ohio and Silicon Valley, California – Wednesday, February 8, 2023 - Niobium has been selected as the most recent Portfolio Company to join the Silicon Catalyst ecosystem through its admission into the Silicon Catalyst incubator. Silicon Catalyst is the world’s only incubator focused exclusively on accelerating semiconductor solutions.
“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, COO of Silicon Catalyst. “Their team has tremendous strengths and we believe the Silicon Catalyst ecosystem possesses the complementary strengths to help them achieve success.”
Niobium Microsystems, Inc. (Niobium) announced the appointment of Kevin Yoder as the company’s President and Chief Executive Officer and newest board member. 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.
“Kevin brings a perfect combination of strategic vision around our R&D efforts and success in bringing microelectronics products to market.” says Rob Wiltbank, Chairman of the Niobium Board of Directors. “We see a future where computing on encrypted data becomes truly accessible based on custom hardware for Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), making true privacy the norm.”
“Niobium has already established itself as a leader in FHE and the market is getting significant attention from both customers and investors," says 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 markets. Prior to Lantronix, Kevin spent six years at Avago Technologies (now Broadcom) as Vice President of Americas’ Sales and Marketing serving the needs of the company’s fourteen business units and supporting the acquisition and integration of six companies.
“We intend to take full advantage of the extensive array of resources provided by the Silicon Catalyst ecosystem comprised of Strategic and In-Kind Partners coupled with nearly 250 season semiconductor advisors to further our commercialization efforts and better understand secure compute market needs,” noted Yoder regarding Niobium’s acceptance into the Silicon Catalyst ecosystem.
About Niobium Microsystems
Niobium Microsystems, Inc. develops high performance microelectronic components to enable the secure collection, processing, and distribution of critical data. Niobium offers the world’s fastest complete fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) accelerator and through the company’s dedicated FHE SoC, Niobium will offer the first dedicated hardware capable of advancing FHE into commercial applications. Niobium is headquartered in Dayton, OH with offices in Columbus, Ohio, Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco, California. More information is available at niobiummicrosystems.com.
About Silicon Catalyst
Silicon Catalyst is the world’s only incubator focused exclusively on accelerating semiconductor solutions, built on a comprehensive coalition of in-kind and strategic partners to dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of development. More than 800 startup companies worldwide have engaged with Silicon Catalyst and the company has admitted 90 exciting companies. With a world-class network of mentors to advise startups, Silicon Catalyst is helping new semiconductor companies address the challenges in moving from idea to realization. The incubator/accelerator supplies startups with access to design tools, silicon devices, networking, and a path to funding, banking and marketing acumen to successfully launch and grow their companies’ novel technology solutions. Over the past seven plus years, the Silicon Catalyst model has proven to dramatically accelerate a startup’s trajectory while at the same time de-risking the equation for investors. Silicon Catalyst has been named the Semiconductor Review’s 2021 Top-10 Solutions Company award winner. More information is available at www.siliconcatalyst.com and www.siliconcatalystangels.com