Lip-Bu Tan (born November 12, 1959) is a

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

n-born American executive and entrepreneur presently the executive chairman of Cadence Design Systems and Chairman of Walden International, a

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to start-up company, startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth poten ...

firm.

Early life and education

Born in 1959 in Muar,

Johor Johor (; ), also spelled as Johore, is a state of Malaysia in the south of the Malay Peninsula. Johor has land borders with the Malaysian states of Pahang to the north and Malacca and Negeri Sembilan to the northwest. Johor shares maritime ...

, Federation of Malaya (in modern

) to a Malaysian Chinese family, Tan grew up in

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...

and graduated from

Nanyang University Nanyang University (, also known as Nantah (), was a university in Singapore between 1956 and 1980. During its existence, it was Singapore's only private university in the Chinese language. In 1980, Nanyang University was merged with the Univer ...

with a

BSc A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University ...

in physics. Tan later completed an

M.S. A Master of Science ( la, Magisterii Scientiae; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree in the field of science awarded by universities in many countries or a person holding such a degree. In contrast to ...

in nuclear engineering at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

(MIT) in the U.S. Tan began Ph.D. studies in the subject at MIT, but because the 1979

Three Mile Island accident The Three Mile Island accident was a partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island, Unit 2 (TMI-2) reactor in Pennsylvania, United States. It began at 4 a.m. on March 28, 1979. It is the most significant accident in U.S. commercial nuclea ...

caused a sharp reduction in opportunities in the nuclear industry, Tan left MIT and transferred to the

University of San Francisco The University of San Francisco (USF) is a private Jesuit university in San Francisco, California. The university's main campus is located on a setting between the Golden Gate Bridge and Golden Gate Park. The main campus is nicknamed "The Hil ...

, where he graduated with an

MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...

Business career

Tan was a manager at EDS Nuclear and ECHO Energy and partner at the Walden USA investment fund before founding venture capital firm Walden International in 1987. He named the firm after the book ''

Walden ''Walden'' (; first published in 1854 as ''Walden; or, Life in the Woods'') is a book by American transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau. The text is a reflection upon the author's simple living in natural surroundings. The work is part ...

'' by Henry David Thoreau because Tan's goal was to be like Thoreau: "contrarian, rather than just following the trend." Growing from $20 million upon its founding to $2 billion by 2001, Walden International has focused its investments on

semiconductor A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical conductivity value falling between that of a conductor, such as copper, and an insulator, such as glass. Its resistivity falls as its temperature rises; metals behave in the opposite way. ...

, alternative energy, and digital media businesses and startups in the U.S. and Asia such as Ambarella Inc.,

Creative Technology Creative Technology Ltd. is a Singaporean multinational technology company headquartered with overseas offices in Shanghai, Tokyo, Dublin, and Silicon Valley (where in the US it is known as Creative Labs). The principal activities of the compa ...

S3 Graphics S3 Graphics, Ltd (commonly referred to as S3) was an American computer graphics company. The company sold the Trio, ViRGE, Savage 3D, and Chrome series of graphics processors. Struggling against competition from 3dfx Interactive, ATI and Nvid ...

, and Sina Corp. For Tan's breakthrough investments in Asian tech startups, ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...

'' dubbed Tan "the pioneer of Asian VC" in 2001. On February 10, 2004, the Cadence Design Systems board of directors elected Tan to the board. Tan became interim co-CEO in October 2008 following the resignation of Michael Fister in October 2008. The Cadence board formally named Tan president and CEO effective January 8, 2009. Under Tan's leadership, Cadence grew its net worth to $1.3 billion by 2012, including $440 million in that year alone. Cadence also expanded its

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flowin ...

office in 2012. In 2013, Cadence purchased private chip design company Tensilica for $380 million. On November 16, 2017, Tan dropped the title of president while remaining CEO of Cadence. In 2017, the analytics firm

Relationship Science Relationship science is an interdisciplinary field dedicated to the scientific study of interpersonal relationship processes. Due to its interdisciplinary nature, relationship science is made-up of researchers of various professional backgrounds wi ...

named him most connected executives in the technology industry garnering a perfect "power score" of 100.

Boards and memberships

From 2006 to 2011, Tan was a trustee of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Tan also served on the

Regent College Regent College is an interdenominational evangelical Christian College of Christian studies, and an affiliated college of the University of British Columbia, located next to the university's campus in the University Endowment Lands west of V ...

Board of Governors from 2006 to 2012. Additionally, Tan currently directs the boards of

Hewlett Packard Enterprise The Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company (HPE) is an American multinational information technology company based in Spring, Texas, United States. HPE was founded on November 1, 2015, in Palo Alto, California, as part of the splitting of the ...

Schneider Electric Schneider Electric SE is a French multinational company that specializes in digital automation and energy management. It addresses homes, buildings, data centers, infrastructure and industries, by combining energy technologies, real-time automatio ...

, and

Softbank is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo which focuses on investment management. The Group primarily invests in companies operating in technology, energy, and financial sectors. It also runs the Vi ...

and has served on the boards of Ambarella,

Flextronics International Flex Ltd. (previously known as Flextronics International Ltd. or Flextronics) is an American Singaporean-domiciled multinational diversified manufacturing company. It is the third largest global electronics manufacturing services (EMS), origi ...

Inphi Corporation Inphi Corporation is an American company that produces 10G-800G high-speed analog and mixed-signal semiconductor components and optical subsystems to networking original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), optical module, cloud and telecom service p ...

Mindtree Mindtree Ltd was an Indian multinational information technology services and consulting company, headquartered in Bangalore. It is a part of the Larsen & Toubro Group. Since its foundation in 1999, the company has employed over 38,518 employ ...

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) is a partially state-owned publicly-listed Chinese pure-play semiconductor foundry company. (published 05-09-2019) (published 05-24-2019) It is the largest contract chip maker in mainl ...

UC Berkeley College of Engineering The University of California, Berkeley College of Engineering, branded as Berkeley Engineering, is the engineering wing of the University of California, Berkeley, a public research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1931, the ...

, and

United Overseas Bank United Overseas Bank Limited (), often known as UOB, is a Singaporean multinational banking corporation headquartered in Singapore, with branches mostly found in most Southeast Asian countries. Founded in 1935 as United Chinese Bank (UCB) by S ...

. He is also a member of the Committee of 100. Tan has also been an elder at the First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley since the 1990s.

Philanthropy

In November 2019, Tan and Cadence Design Systems endowed two computer science professorships for $3 million each at Carnegie Mellon University.

Personal life

Tan lives in

Piedmont, California Piedmont is a small city located in Alameda County, California, United States, completely surrounded by the city of Oakland. Its residential population was 11,270 at the 2020 census. The name comes from the region of Piedmont in Italy, and it me ...

, with his wife Ysa Loo. They have two grown children.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tan, Lip-Bu Living people 1959 births 21st-century American businesspeople American chairpersons of corporations American computer businesspeople American venture capitalists American technology chief executives American people of Chinese descent Malaysian emigrants to the United States Malaysian people of Chinese descent People from Muar People from Piedmont, California American Presbyterians Nanyang University alumni MIT School of Engineering alumni University of San Francisco alumni 20th-century American businesspeople People from Singapore