Redmond-based antenna company Kymeta has named former AMD and Synaptics executive Rick Bergman as the company's new CEO.
Bergman will start in the role April 1, replacing Kymeta's co-CEOs Walter Berger and Doug Hutcheson, who will retire at the end of March. Former Boeing executive Nicole Piasecki, meanwhile, will take over as board chair for Hutcheson.
"With Rick Bergman’s track record of driving value-led growth in the technology sector bolstered by disciplined execution, we eagerly anticipate the next phase of growth for Kymeta," Piasecki, who joined Kymeta's board in May 2022, said in a news release.
Bergman spent more than four years as executive vice president at the computer processor company AMD before joining Kymeta, according to his LinkedIn page. Before that, he spent more than seven years as CEO of the hardware and software company Synaptics.
Piasecki's most recent role at Boeing was vice president and general manager of the propulsion systems division, according to her LinkedIn page. She left the company in 2017 after roughly 16 years.
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Berger and Hutcheson started as co-CEOs in September 2021. The appointment was made almost three years after Kymeta's previous CEO, Nathan Kundtz, had stepped down from the role. Berger and Hutcheson have both been with the company since 2019. At the time of their CEO announcement, Hutcheson told the Business Journal the appointment was mostly a formality, and the pair had been leading the company in practice since Kundtz stepped down.
Kundtz is now the co-founder and CEO of Seattle-based artificial intelligence startup Rendered.ai.
Kymeta, founded in 2012, makes a flat-panel mobile antenna designed to improve communications in difficult terrains. The company allows first responders to communicate while en route to disasters, and it allows command center vehicles to move rather than having to stay stationary.
In March 2022, Kymeta raised $84 million in a round co-led by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. Kymeta raised $30 million in 2020 from South Korean defense electronics company Hanwha Systems.
