Safi Qureshey

Safi Qureshey is a successful technology entrepreneur, executive and investor for the last twenty-five years. Best known as a Founder and CEO of AST Research, a Fortune 500 public company, Safi has developed deep relationships in the technology industry, investment banking and Venture Capital community, and local research universities. He is currently an active technology investor, advisor and Board member of technology companies. Safi and two other immigrant engineers founded AST Research, Inc. in 1980 to address the emerging new PC opportunity. AST went public in 1984 with profitable sales of over $100 million and by 1992 with sales of over $1.4 billion had become a Fortune 500 Company. With over 6000 employees and sales of over $2.5 billion AST ranked in the top 10 PC companies in the world and the market share leader in China. In 1997, Korea’s largest electronics company Samsung Electronics acquired AST. Safi was the first Pakistani American to take a company public in 1984 and founder/CEO of a Fortune 500. Currently, Safi is Chairman of Quartics (http://ww.quartics.com/), a fabless semiconductor company in Irvine, California. Quartics is delivering high definition (HD) video processing solutions to leading PC OEMs. This device offloads the CPU and delivers superior video watching experience for applications like YouTube, Skype and other social video sites. Quartics’ video processing unit (VPU) also has applications for the next generation IP set-top boxes (STBs), mobile internet devices (MIDs) and HDTVs. Safi is also on the Advisory Board of Anvita Health (http://www.anvitahealth.com/) of San Diego, the innovative health care analytics company that provides the analytics engine for Google™ Health™ and other health care leaders. He also serves as a Board member of Japan Ecologia (www.lecologia.jp) of Tokyo which is developing natural pesticides for consumer and agricultural needs.