Velodyne Lidar, Inc. (NASDAQ: VLDR, VLDRW), a U.S. lidar company, has announced the appointment of Theodore “Ted” L. Tewksbury, Ph.D. as Chief Executive Officer, effective November 10, 2021. Tewksbury, Ph.D. was previously Chief Executive Officer of Eta Compute, a provider of ultra-low power AI vision systems.
In JUly 2021, company founder Dr. Anand Gopalan informed the Board of Directors that he was stepping down as CEO and a member of the Board, effective July 30, 2021.
Velodyne’s sensor and software solutions meet the needs of a wide range of industries, including autonomous vehicles, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), robotics, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), smart cities and security.
Michael Dee, Chairman of the Velodyne Board of Directors, says: “We are pleased to welcome Ted to the Velodyne team. Ted’s extensive leadership experience in addition to engineering expertise, make him an ideal candidate to lead Velodyne as we continue to lead the lidar industry with the most cutting-edge products and scalable manufacturing capacity. Innovation and execution are our most important priorities and Ted’s direct experience designing and manufacturing leading-edge technologies makes him a natural complement to Velodyne’s world-class technology development and engineering team.
He adds: “Velodyne is far and away the market leader, having sold over 15,000 sensors in the last 12 months with the widest product range in the industry. We are confident that under his leadership, Velodyne is poised to continue expanding its global footprint and drive long-term value for all shareholders.”
“I am thrilled to join Velodyne at such an exciting time in its development. It is an honor to be part of its world class management and engineering team. The opportunity set for Velodyne is vast and mass adoption is just around the corner,” says Dr. Tewksbury. “The Velodyne name is revered in the lidar space and I look forward to advancing the company’s strategy and driving value for all stakeholders for years to come.”
Velodyne has established a center of excellence in India and is growing its local engineering teams to support ADAS applications in South Korea.
It began trading on the Nasdaq in September, 2020.
