Aart de Geus
Executive Chair and Founder,
Synopsys, Inc.

Dr. Aart de Geus is a semiconductor industry pioneer of Electronic Design Automation (EDA), which provides the software tools and IP blocks central to designing digital chips. Synopsys, which Aart founded in 1986, initially developed and broadly commercialized logic synthesis which automates the creation of digital designs from language descriptions. This capability transitioned Computer-Aided Design (CAD) into the EDA era by enabling decades of enormous, digital complexity scaling, often referred to as Moore’s Law. Over the ensuing decades of his career at Synopsys, Aart expanded its product offering and market position with unrelenting investments in state-of-the-art R&D and approximately 120 acquisitions. Over the years, Synopsys became the industry leader in EDA and a cornerstone ecosystem company used on virtually every advanced digital chip in the world. While holding many positions in the start-up years of the company, Aart served as CEO from 1994 to 2024.

Aart is a legendary speaker, widely recognized for using visual storytelling to blend technology trends, with the history of semiconductor design, and the shift to systemic complexity, invariably culminating into a motivating vision of an innovative high-tech future. For his pioneering work, industry impact, and community service, Aart has received numerous honors, including Electronic Business Magazine’s “CEO of the Year” (2002) and “Top 10 Most Influential Executives” (2005), the IEEE Robert N. Noyce Medal (2007), the Silicon Valley Leadership Group (SVLG) “Spirit of the Valley” Lifetime Achievement Award (2007), the GSA “Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award” (2009), and an honorary PhD from Glasgow University (2022).

Aart is active in the business community, serving on the Boards of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group (SVLG), the Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA), the Electronic System Design Alliance (ESDA), and on the Board of Directors of Applied Materials. He is also involved in the Synopsys Foundation that he created in 1999, and which, among many things, promotes project-based science and math learning throughout Silicon Valley.