Pragmatic welcomes new CEO David Moore as founder Scott White takes fresh role

Semiconductor industry veteran David Moore has joined Pragmatic as chief executive officer after founder and CEO Scott White moved into the role of executive director, strategic initiatives.

Since founding Pragmatic Semiconductor in 2010, Scott and his team have taken the company from a novel semiconductor concept to a proven high-yield manufacturing process, now embarking on global scale-up.

Pragmatic has its headquarters on Cambridge Science Park, with a production facility making flexible integrated circuits in Sedgefield, County Durham. A second fab is under construction at a new 15-acre Pragmatic Park site, also in Durham. Once this second fab is complete, Pragmatic will be the highest volume semiconductor manufacturer in the UK.

“Scott passes the CEO mantle to Dave at an exciting time for Pragmatic,” said Pragmatic Semiconductor chairman Erik Langaker.

“I am delighted to welcome Dave to Pragmatic. I am confident that he will enable Pragmatic to scale its foundry capacity to become a global leader in the semiconductor industry and will be instrumental in helping us achieve our vision of electronics in everything.”

He added of Scott, who remains on the board: “The board and I would like to express our gratitude to Scott for the hard work and commitment he has shown in leading the business. Under his leadership the company has gone from its inception 13 years ago to where it is now. It has a blue-chip partner and customer base, with a clear demand for Pragmatic’s flexible integrated circuits.”

David takes on the role at Pragmatic with immediate effect. Originally from Dublin, Ireland, he has spent the majority of his career based in the US in senior operating positions with globally leading semiconductor companies.

A highly respected executive in the industry with over two decades of semiconductor leadership experience, he was most recently chief strategy officer at Micron Technology, Inc, where he had group-wide accountability for a range of corporate functions including corporate strategy, M&A and venture capital, global communications and marketing, and government affairs.

Prior to Micron, David spent six years at Intel Corporation in a number of executive leadership roles, most latterly as general manager of the programmable solutions group where he led the multi-billion-dollar FPGA and structured ASIC business on a global basis for the company. His prior experience includes senior engineering and business leadership positions in both the US and overseas at Altera Corporation, a pioneer in programmable logic, where Moore spent 15 years prior to its acquisition by Intel in 2015.

“I am delighted to be joining Pragmatic at such a pivotal time for the company and to be here on the ground in Cambridge,” David told the Cambridge Independent. “The welcome from Scott White and the entire team has been incredible and I could not be more excited by the opportunity ahead for Pragmatic and its technology.

“Having worked in semiconductors for over two decades, at Altera, Intel and Micron, I’ve witnessed some mind-blowing innovation in the industry, but the more I’ve learned about Pragmatic, the more excited I have become by the truly disruptive potential of its innovative technology.”