Cees Links (born in 1957 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands) is a Dutch entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of GreenPeak Technologies (2004), a

fabless Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing their fabrication (or ''fab'') to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry. These foundries are typically, but not exclus ...

semiconductor A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical resistivity and conductivity, electrical conductivity value falling between that of a electrical conductor, conductor, such as copper, and an insulator (electricity), insulator, such as glas ...

company for

Smart Home Smart or SMART may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Smart'' (Hey! Say! JUMP album), 2014 * Smart (Hotels.com), former mascot of Hotels.com * ''Smart'' (Sleeper album), 1995 debut album by Sleeper * ''SMart'', a children's television seri ...

and

Internet of things The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other comm ...

(IoT) applications, in 2016 sold to

Qorvo Qorvo is an American semiconductor company that designs, manufactures, and supplies radio-frequency systems for applications that drive wireless and broadband communications, as well as foundry services. The company, which trades on NASDAQ, was c ...

Inc., a USA-based semi-conductor/technology company.

Career

Upon graduation from the

University of Twente The University of Twente (Dutch: ''Universiteit Twente''; , abbr. ) is a public technical university located in Enschede, Netherlands. The university has been placed in the top 170 universities in the world by multiple central ranking tables. ...

in 1982, Links started his career at

NCR Corporation NCR Corporation, previously known as National Cash Register, is an American software, consulting and technology company providing several professional services and electronic products. It manufactures self-service kiosks, point-of-sale termin ...

. As product manager, he was responsible for the first concept development and launch of the world's first wireless LAN product in 1990,

WaveLAN WaveLAN was a brand name for a family of wireless networking technology sold by NCR, AT&T, Lucent Technologies, and Agere Systems as well as being sold by other companies under OEM agreements. The WaveLAN name debuted on the market in 1990 and was ...

, a major innovation at that time. Throughout several acquisitions and divestitures (NCR, AT&T, Lucent Technologies and Agere Systems), Links continued his work in the wireless LAN area, which he turned into a multi-hundred million dollar business for Agere Systems. Links started as product manager, responsible for the initial Wi-Fi marketing and concept creation and in 1996 became general manager of the Wi-Fi business unit. He directly closed the deal with Steve Jobs at Apple Computer in 1999 that ignited the growth of the wireless LAN industry. Through this deal, wireless LANs went on to become the standard communication feature as Wi-Fi is known today. Links has also been involved with wireless next generation technology breakthroughs in the

ZigBee Zigbee is an IEEE 802.15.4-based specification for a suite of high-level communication protocols used to create personal area networks with small, low-power digital radios, such as for home automation, medical device data collection, and othe ...

Alliance, now th
Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA)
and the IoT. From 1991 until 2002, Links was involved in the establishment of the

IEEE 802.11 IEEE 802.11 is part of the IEEE 802 set of local area network (LAN) technical standards, and specifies the set of media access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) protocols for implementing wireless local area network (WLAN) computer commun ...

standardization committee and the

Wi-Fi Alliance The Wi-Fi Alliance is a non-profit organization that owns the Wi-Fi trademark. Manufacturers may use the trademark to brand products certified for Wi-Fi interoperability. History Early 802.11 products suffered from interoperability problems be ...

. He was also instrumental in helping to establish the IEEE 802.15 standardization committee to become the basis for the ZigBee/Threa
Matter
sense and control networking technology and standardization.

GreenPeak Technologies

In 2004 Links founded GreenPeak Technologies (originally under the stealth name of Xanadu Wireless), where he was CEO. GreenPeak is a fabless semiconductor company with a strong focus on wireless for sense and control networks in Smart Home and Internet of Things applications. Links got the company launched and uniquely positioned in the market. He has grown the team to +100 people and accelerated growth. In May 2016, GreenPeak Technologies was acquired by

Awards

Links was recognized in January 2017 as Wi-Fi pioneer with the Golden Mousetrap Lifetime Achievement award. In May 2019, Wireless technology innovator Cees Links inducted into Wi-Fi NOW Hall of Fame On 29 October 2019, the WaveLAN team received an IEEE Milestone Award, where WaveLAN was recognized as the pre-cursor of Wi-Fi, leading to the formation of the

Working Group for Wireless Local Area Networks. During this celebration event that took place in the City Hall of

Nieuwegein Nieuwegein () is a municipality and city in the Netherlands, Dutch province of Utrecht (province), Utrecht. It is bordered on the north by the city of Utrecht (city), Utrecht, the provincial capital. It is separated from Vianen to the south by the ...

, the Netherlands, the town where most of the WaveLAN developments had taken place. During that event, Links received an honorary citizenship of the City of Nieuwegein.

Early life, education and personal life

Links was born in 1957 and raised in Amsterdam, the son of Piet Links, a mathematics teacher, who taught Cees the love for numbers and analytics, and Thea van der Kolk. He has 6 siblings. During his study his favourite subject was the transition of “data” into “information”, how numbers can become meaningful to communicate information for solving problems. “Information Links” was the name of his first company that he started in 1979. From his upbringing “meaningful” was a key word, which for him turned into “A connected world is a better world”, explaining his passion for continuous improvement of communication. Links holds a master's degree in Applied Mathematics and a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering from the Twente University of Technology in Enschede, the Netherlands. He graduated from an Advanced Business Management Course from the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, Durham NC, USA. Links lives in Maarssen, the Netherlands. He is married to Angela Champness, father of five and grandfather of three.

Publications

Author of the book: “The Spirit of Wi-Fi”, about the Wi-Fi history. Subtitle: “Wi-Fi: where it so suddenly came from, where it is today and where it is going in the future.�

Professor Wolter Lemstra for TU Delft wrote an in-depth study on “The Innovation Journey of Wi-Fi”, issued by Cambridge Press and explaining Cees' role in the development of Wi-Fi.

References

Alumni Wall of Fame - Cees Links - Inventor of WiFi

TwitTV interview with Cees Links on Smart Homes
*

EE Times ''EE Times'' (''Electronic Engineering Times'') is an electronics industry magazine published in the United States since 1972. EE Times is currently owned by AspenCore, a division of Arrow Electronics since August 2016. Since its acquisition ...

br>Cees Links on the secret success of Steve Jobs: wireless internet
*

Bloomberg Television Bloomberg Television (on-air as Bloomberg) is an American-based pay television network focusing on business and capital market programming, owned by Bloomberg L.P. It is distributed globally, reaching over 310 million homes worldwide. It is head ...

br>Interview with Cees Links on the invention of WiFi
*

Tweakers Tweakers (formerly called Tweakers.net) is a Dutch technology website featuring news and information about hardware, software, games and the Internet. The name is derived from the verb "tweaking", which is a word geeks use to refer to optimisatio ...

br>Polder Pioneers Cees Links & Vic Hayes - Founders of Wifi

10 important Dutch inventions - The beginning of WiFi
{{DEFAULTSORT:Links, Cees 1957 births Living people Engineers from Amsterdam Radio pioneers Businesspeople from Amsterdam Dutch corporate directors Dutch chief executives in the technology industry University of Twente