Board of Directors

Dr. Mario Paniccia is an experienced executive with over 25 years in the photonics industry. Currently Mario is CEO and co-founder of ANELLO Photonics. Prior to ANELLO, Paniccia was at Intel where he achieved the level of Intel Fellow, CTO & GM of the Silicon Photonics Group. Dr. Paniccia is considered a world expert in silicon photonics & the technology he pioneered is used today in Data Centers around the world. In February 2021 Paniccia was inducted into the National Academy of Engineers (NAE) for his “contributions and commercialization to the field of silicon photonics”.

Dr. Adam Carter is an accomplished leader in the semiconductor industry, bringing over 35 years of experience to his role as Chief Executive Officer of OpenLight Photonics. Throughout his career, Adam has held various key positions in Sales, Marketing, and General Management, at HP, Agilent, Avago, and Cisco, and C-level executive positions at Oclaro and Foxconn Interconnect. Dr. Carter holds a B.Sc. (Honors) in Applied Physics from Portsmouth University and received a PhD from the University of Wales, Cardiff, for his research on Reactive Ion Etching of III-V semiconductor materials.

Phil Inagaki is Managing Partner & Chief Investment Officer at Xora, where he oversees the firm’s investment strategy, portfolio management, and capital deployment across groundbreaking deep tech ventures. He also leads Xora Venture Labs, the firm’s startup incubation practice.

Dipender Saluja is Managing Partner of the Technology Impact Fund, Capricorn Investment Group, an investment firm founded to demonstrate that it is possible to invest profitably while driving sustainable positive change. Capricorn manages about $12B in assets for investors who strive for extraordinary investment results by leveraging market forces to accelerate large scale impact. Capricorn's investment process is grounded in comprehensive perspectives on long-term, global trends in technology, energy, healthcare, transportation & agriculture. Capricorn has for two decades sponsored investment partnerships focused on specific areas of impact, such as clean technology, renewable energy infrastructure, renewable resources, & health & wellness. The Technology Impact Fund (TIF) is an early-stage venture capital partnership that invests in companies developing & scaling new technologies, novel materials, semiconductors, devices, & systems as solutions to global challenges in energy, transportation, electronics, agriculture, aerospace, infrastructure, & industrial decarbonization. TIF is a key funder & an early investor in iconic companies including Tesla, QuantumScape, Redwood Materials, Joby Aviation, SpaceX, Planet Labs, Innovium, Nuvia, Raxium, Fervo, FORM Energy, Harbinger, Helion, and Seurat. Prior to Capricorn, Dipender was Chief of Staff at Cadence, a global market leader in electronic design, where he built & managed businesses that worked closely with electronics companies around the world. Prior to that he was at Data General (EMC), Honeywell, ROLM (IBM), & GF Energy Research Center. He’s an electrical engineer by training, & attended UND, Univ of Minnesota & Stanford. Dipender serves on the boards of several public and private companies like AST, Electric Hydrogen, Eridan, Eridu, Joby Aviation (NYSE: JOBY), Navitas (NASDAQ: NVTS), QuantumScape (NYSE: QS), Rhoda, Saildrone, SPAN.IO, & Summit, on the Leadership Council of Cyclotron Road, the Advisory Board of the International Solar Alliance, the investment committee of PRIME, the Advisory Board of IonE, & is a commissioner of the Global Commission to End Energy Poverty (GCEEP). He is based in Palo Alto.