1. You’ve been with indie for almost three years now. Can you tell us a bit about your background and what was attractive about indie? How has your background prepared you for your position at indie?

My background has been in semiconductors for over three decades, starting as an RF and analog chip designer and then moving into various commercially focused roles. My semiconductor segment experience has spanned consumer electronics, wired and wireless communications, optical communications and automotive. In my previous company, Arm, the semiconductor IP leader, I led the automotive division and experienced first-hand, the technology innovation that semiconductors are bringing to the entire automotive ecosystem, from carmakers to chip and software vendors, at a time of huge industry disruption. With a prime focus on automotive semiconductors, it was clear to me that indie is well-positioned to bring class-leading innovation to solve many of the industry’s current technology challenges. My cumulative industry experience has been invaluable in my role at indie, enabling me to bring a wide range of industry-specific insights, but also ideas from adjacent markets.

2. indie is a public company with a relatively large geographic footprint. Can you give the readers an idea of some of indie’s “metrics” that will help our readers get a better sense of the company?
 
 indie is a NASDAQ-listed company and our headquarters are in Orange County, Calif. Our annual revenues are over $200 million, an incredible increase of 10x since our IPO in 2021. We have around 1000 team members in multiple geographies around the world, strategically located to best serve our customers locally and to help ensure we can tap into top engineering talent wherever it may be. We have engineering and commercial offices located in North and South America, Europe, China, Japan, Korea, India and Morocco.

3. indie has completed several acquisitions over the past few years. What can you tell us about those acquisitions and the philosophy behind them? What are indie’s thoughts on organic growth versus acquisitions?

indie has acquired eight companies over the last few years. Our strategy for acquisitions is two-fold: rapidly bring in complementary technology to accelerate a market position in an existing segment or a new segment we believe shows promising opportunity and to onboard specific engineering talent faster than we could organically hire. The targeted acquisitions we have made have strengthened our capabilities in vision and radar, photonics and high speed data processing, which we recognize will all be key and persisting requirements for high-value automotive semiconductors.

4. The company was founded in 2007. Can you tell us a bit more about indie’s product and technology portfolio and capabilities? How have these evolved since the founding of the company? How important is the development and integration of software?

indie is a mixed-signal semiconductor and systems company at its heart. Our analog, digital, signal processing, photonics and system design expertise enables us to develop an innovative product portfolio to address the three automotive megatrends of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), in-cabin user experience (UX) and electrification. Since the founding of the company, we have developed our engineering expertise organically and inorganically to enable us to focus on more complex, differentiated and higher-value solutions. As the complexity of our products has increased, software has become a critical element of our customer value proposition, and our silicon and software are co-optimized to ensure optimal performance in the end application.

5. indie is very involved with the automotive market, with a focus on ADAS, in-cabin user experiences and electrification applications. Can you comment on your participation in each of these opportunities? How do you see that participation and the automotive market changing in the next five years?

Our current products across the three megatrends span: ADAS — vision, LiDAR, radar and ultrasonic processors; UX — wireless charging and USB power delivery, USB hub and Apple CarPlay connectivity, high speed video and data transport, interior and exterior lighting and small motor control; electrification — battery sensor hub, battery system safety supervisor and also custom ASICs for select customers. We will continue to evolve and innovate new products across the three megatrends but see a particular opportunity to focus deeper on ADAS as we are the only semiconductor company developing solutions for all four sensor modalities and believe we can bring real innovation to enable mass-market ADAS solutions for all vehicle classes.

6. What differentiates the current indie products from the products of your competitors? How have the acquisitions helped differentiate your products?

Our differentiation is multi-faceted. For example, in ADAS, we bring strong algorithmic software and real-time signal processing hardware innovation that allows indie to deliver superior performance at power levels that competitors cannot match; in UX, our levels of on-chip mixed-signal processing and power management integration enable significant external bill-of-materials and PCB footprint savings for our customers. And in electrification, we combine our mixed-signal expertise from UX with the highest levels of functional safety to meet our customers’ challenging mission critical requirements. And overarching all of these differentiators is our system-centric development approach which enables us to consider the wider system integration constraints of our customers and carmakers and ensure our silicon products can help to mitigate or resolve these downstream challenges cost-effectively.

7. Morgan Stanley has recognized indie as the fastest-growing semiconductor company in the world recently. What challenges and opportunities have this fast growth presented to the company and how are you dealing with them?
 
 We are extremely proud that Morgan Stanley recently recognized indie as the fastest-growing semiconductor company in the world over a two-year period (and in the top five over a three-year period) out of a peer group of over 200 companies. Growth this fast presents multiple challenges: rapidly on-boarding new talent across engineering, sales and support functions; ensuring our acquisitions are integrated efficiently and with minimal disruption to the acquired and existing teams; ensuring our supply chain has the capacity and reliability to meet our demand; maintaining a strong company identity and culture across global teams….and many more. A laser focus on priorities and ensuring everyone is committed to the wider vision has helped us to steer a path through these exciting challenges.

8. A team of engineers founded the company. Can you describe the culture at indie? Is it still entrepreneurial? What is the message that you want to get across to customers and employees and what does the company do to enable that corporate culture?

We foster a culture of innovation, creative problem-solving, mutual respect, supporting each other and openness across the organization. We have maintained this culture as we have grown, and it often feels like we are an entrepreneurial start-up with a can-do attitude but with the safety net of infrastructure that larger companies bring. Our culture can be summed up by how we internally refer to the global team as the “indie family.”

9. What excites you about the future of the automotive industry and specifically the outlook for automotive semiconductors?
 
 While there has been some short-term turbulence in the automotive industry due to global macroeconomics and geopolitics, the automotive semiconductor industry has reason to be optimistic. As economies continue to recover, global vehicle production and sales will start to grow. And while the long-term rate of vehicle sales will be modest, the semiconductor content growth per vehicle will continue to accelerate, from over $900 average content per vehicle today to over $1500 per vehicle by 2030. This semiconductor content is being driven not by the sales of new cars but by the three automotive megatrends I referenced earlier. And in turn, the drivers for these are extremely tangible: global road safety and emissions regulation and consumer demand for ever improving in-cabin UX. So, I am super excited by this innovation-driven, semiconductor-enabled future!