Andy Hopper - Industry

Industry

In 1978, Hopper founded Orbis Ltd to develop networking technologies.

In 1978 Hopper worked with Hermann Hauser and Chris Curry, founders of Acorn Computers Ltd; Orbis became a division of Acorn in 1979 and continued to work with the Cambridge Ring. While at Acorn, Hopper helped to design some of the chips for the BBC Micro. When Acorn was acquired by Olivetti in 1985, Hauser became vice-president for research at Olivetti, in which role he co-founded the Olivetti Research Laboratory in 1986 with Hopper; Hopper became its Managing Director.

In 1985, after leaving Acorn, Hopper co-founded Qudos, a company producing CAD software and doing chip prototyping. He remained a director until 1989.

In 1993, Hopper set up Advanced Telecommunication Modules Ltd with Hermann Hauser. This company went public as Virata in 1999. The company was acquired by Conexant Systems on 1 March 2004.

In 1995, Hopper co-founded Telemedia Systems, now called IPV, and was its chairman until 2003.

In 1997, Hopper co-founded Adaptive Broadband Ltd (ABL) to further develop the ‘Wireless ATM’ project started at ORL in the early 90s. ABL developed a wireless broadband technology which offered high data rates over a point-to-multipoint radio link (25 Mbit/s operating in the 5.8 GHz unlicensed frequency band). High-speed connectivity at low-cost was made possible by a combination of Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) and packet-on-demand bandwidth management, based on ATM technology. ABL was bought by California Microwave, Inc in 1998.

In January 2000, Hopper co-founded Cambridge Broadband which was to develop broadband fixed wireless equipment; he was non-executive chairman from 2000 - 2005.

In 2002 Hopper was involved in the founding of Ubisense Ltd to further develop the location technologies and sentient computing concepts that grew out of the ORL Active Badge system. Hopper has been chairman since 2006 and a director since 2003 and was involved in its IPO in June 2011.

In 2002, Hopper co-founded RealVNC and has served as chairman since the company's inception.

In 2002, Hopper co-founded Level 5 Networks and was a director until 2008, just after it merged with Solarflare Inc.

From 2005 until 2009, Hopper was chairman of Adventiq, a joint venture between Adder and RealVNC, developing a VNC-based system-on-a-chip.

Hopper was an advisor to Hauser’s venture capital firm Amadeus Capital Partners from 2001 until 2005. He was also an advisor to the Cambridge Gateway Fund from 2001 until 2006.