Ronald Chwang is the Chairman and President of iD Ventures America. Dr. Chwang initiated the Acer venture investment activities in North America with the launch of “Acer Technology Venture Fund” in 1997. Subsequently, IDVA has successfully formed “IP Fund One’ in 2000, “iD6 Fund” in 2005 and “iD8 Fund” in 2008. Dr. Chwang is also a General Partner of iD SoftCapital.
Since 1998, iD Ventures America has managed a total of $250 million venture capital investment in innovating technology start-up companies based in Silicon Valley, and the greater Boston area. Among the notable successes are iRobot (creator of consumer robots, Roomba, and military robot, Packbot); Harmonix Music (creator of music games: Guitar Hero and Rock Band), Artx (silicon chips for Nintendo GameCube), as well as chip design companies such as Allayers (acquired by Broadcom), Monolithic Power System (NASDAQ IPO), Centrality Communication System (acquired by SiRF), etc. The current focus of iD Ventures America investments are in energy efficient applications, medical devices in healthcare, advanced silicon devices and cloud related software applications. In 2009, Dr. Chwang was listed among the top 100 VC in US by AlwaysOn.
From 1986 to 1997, Dr. Chwang was with various Acer entities, serving in executive positions leading various business units in semiconductor chips, computer peripherals, and enterprise server systems. From 1992 to 1997, he was the President and CEO of Acer America Corporation which broke through the annual billion dollar revenue milestone in 1996. Before joining the Acer entities, Dr. Chwang worked in development and management positions at Intel in Oregon and Bell Northern Research in Ottawa.
Dr. Chwang currently serves actively on the board of a number of IDVA’s portfolio companies: LuxVue Technology Corp., mCube Inc., Striiv Inc. and Voltafield Technology Corp., and. He also severs on the board of these public companies: CoAdna Inc. in Sunnyvale, Ca, iRobot Corporation in Bedford, MA, AU Optronics Corporation in, Hisinchu, Taiwan.
Dr. Chwang holds a B.Eng. in Electrical Engineering from McGill University in Montreal, Canada .and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California. He also received an honorary Doctorate of Science from McGill University in 2012.