CEO Interview: Dr. Nikos Zervas of CAST

By SemiWiki

June 3, 2024

Dr. Nikos Zervas joined CAST company in 2010, having previously served as VP of Marketing and Engineering and as COO. Prior to working at CAST, Nikos co-founded Alma Technologies and served as its Chairman and CEO for nine years. Under his leadership Alma Technologies bootstrapped to become a reputable IP provider, developing cutting-edge image and video compression cores and solutions. His research has been published in over 40 technical journal and conference papers, and he has been honored by the IEEE Computer Society with a Low-Power Design Contest award. Nikos served on the board of the Hellenic Semiconductor Industry Association from 2009 until 2013, where he was responsible for strategic planning.

Tell us about your company?

CAST provides IP cores that save time and money for electronic system developers across a wide range of industry segments and application areas.
Our current product line includes processors, compression, interfaces, peripherals, and security, and features industry-leading cores for automotive, industrial, defense, data centers, and other application areas. We focus on providing a better IP experience with every core, meaning high-quality products that are easy to use, backed by market-leading technical support, and available with simple, cost-effective licensing, including royalty-free terms.

CAST was established in 1993 and has helped to pioneer and shape today’s booming IP industry. The company is private and always internally held. This strategic avoidance of external investors or debt of any kind has given us the freedom to grow organically and focus on solving real customer problems rather than being driven primarily by the financial expectations of venture capitalists or the demands of shareholders.

CAST is a global company, with headquarters in New Jersey; staff in San Diego, Austin, and other US locations; offices in the Czech Republic, Italy, Greece, and Poland; and partners throughout Asia. We’ve sold thousands of products to hundreds of customers, with a repeat sales rate of over 50%. These customers range from established tier-1 firms to emerging start-ups, and together they are shipping millions of product units using IP from CAST.

We employ a novel and highly successful approach to developing IP products: our own engineering team develops many CAST IP cores, and we also work with tightly coupled partners who have outstanding technical experience in particular areas. We enforce the same stringent quality standards on every core that CAST offers and we provide front-line support for them all, so customers can get the most advanced IP technology available but work with a provably reliable and trustworthy provider. And for our development partners, it gives their engineering talent access to otherwise unapproachable markets and the advantages of what we believe is the industry‘s most experienced IP sales and marketing team.

What problems are you solving?

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