Eric Chen, Ph. D., is a Managing Partner, Softbank Vision Fund, the world’s largest technology investment fund which has backers including Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Apple, and Qualcomm. The Fund has sizable investments in companies such as WeWork, Apple and Qualcomm. He is the co-founder of BaseBit Technologies, a venture backed company focused on data science for healthcare, operating in the United States and China. 

Previously, Dr. Chen was a Managing Director at Silver Lake Partners since 2008. He was one of two partners who founded Silver Lake’s Hong Kong, Tokyo and Shanghai offices, and its Asia investment and management teams. Silver Lake is the world’s largest private equity firm exclusively focused on investing in technology and technology-enabled industries, having led many large scale and influential investment cases such as Dell, Seagate, Skype, Avago, Alibaba, etc.

Prior to Silver Lake, Dr. Chen was a Senior Vice President and Executive Committee member of ASML, a global leader in semiconductor technology, headquartered in the Netherlands. Dr. Chen joined ASML following its acquisition of Brion Technologies in 2007, a high performance computing company he co-founded in 2002 and served as its CEO since inception. 

Dr. Chen ran Allyes Online Media, the largest Internet advertising technology company in China, headquartered in Shanghai, as its Chairman and CEO 2011-2012. 

Dr. Chen was formerly a Senior Vice President at J.P. Morgan, where he coordinated the global research and investment effort in the electronics sector.

Earlier in his career, Dr. Chen conducted theoretical physics research at Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire ("CERN") and engineering development at Motorola. 

Since 2004, Dr. Chen has been an independent board member of Varian Semiconductor (NASDAQ:VSEA) and member of its Audit and Compensation Committees, until the company’s acquisition by Applied Materials in 2012.

Dr. Chen currently serves as an independent member of the board of directors of Qihoo 360 (NYSE:QIHU), one of China’s largest Internet platform companies He is a member of its Audit and Compensation Committees and chairs its Special Committee.

Dr. Chen currently also serves as an independent member of the board of directors of Applied Materials (NASDAQ: AMAT), the world’s prominent semiconductor technology company. 

Dr. Chen has previously served as board members of Allyes Online Media Holding, China’s leading Internet advertising technology company, headquartered in Shanghai, and Hillstone Networks, a privately held Internet security technology company in Silicon Valley.

Dr. Chen is a co-founder and the Chairman of Executive Council of Future Forum in 2018, a non-profit organization focused on promoting science and technology in China. 

Dr. Chen was born and raised in China and is bilingual in English and Chinese (Mandarin). He represented China in the International Physics Olympics in Germany, earning the Silver Medal. 

Dr. Chen studied Physics at Peking University and received his M.S. in Physics from University of Wisconsin-Madison and his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.