Thao Nguyen is the founder and CEO of TORmem Inc., a Silicon Valley-based deep tech company pioneering memory disaggregation and next-generation AI infrastructure. With nearly 40 years of engineering and leadership experience, Thao brings a proven track record of building and delivering cutting-edge hardware platforms at global scale.

Thao began his career as a VLSI chip designer at IBM, working on IBM mainframes, enterprise storage systems, and tape drives—technologies that formed the foundation of modern computing. He later joined NetApp as a senior staff leader in new product introduction (NPI), specializing in compute and storage server platforms.

As a core founding member of Facebook’s Open Compute Project (OCP), Thao played a pivotal role in shaping the future of open hardware. He served as Vice President of Compatibility and Interoperability and pioneered Facebook’s global hardware manufacturing and quality engineering team, helping scale production of millions of compute and storage servers deployed across Facebook’s global data centers.

After Facebook, Thao joined Packet Host as Vice President of Hardware Engineering and Distinguished Engineer, where he advanced Open19 racks and bare-metal server platforms for edge and cloud-scale deployments. His leadership at Packet accelerated innovation in open infrastructure, leading to the company’s acquisition by Equinix, where his designs became foundational to global infrastructure expansion.

Now, at TORmem, Thao is building the next wave of deep tech innovation—hardware and software platforms purpose-built for memory disaggregation, AI computing, and ultra-fast Ethernet networking. TORmem products are designed and engineered in the USA, delivering breakthrough performance, efficiency, and scalability for the world’s most demanding workloads.

Thao’s hands-on expertise, from silicon to systems, gives TORmem a unique competitive advantage. His humble yet determined leadership continues to inspire confidence among customers, partners, and engineers alike.
“I’ve built compute and storage systems for the world’s largest data centers—now I’m building TORmem to lead the next revolution in memory-centric architecture.” — Thao Nguyen, Founder & CEO

Thao earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering (BSEE) from the University of Missouri–Rolla, followed by a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering (MSEE) from Syracuse University, completed while working full-time at IBM—reflecting his dedication to advancing both education and engineering expertise."