.jpg)
Penguin Solutions, Inc., the AI Factory Platform company, today announced that David Heard, President of Network Infrastructure at Nokia, has been appointed to Penguin Solutions' board of directors, effective immediately. Heard is a seasoned technology executive with more than three decades of experience leading large-scale technology and infrastructure organizations through periods of growth and transformation.
Penguin Solutions appoints David Heard, President of Network Infrastructure at Nokia, to board of directors.
Heard joined Nokia in February 2025 following its acquisition of Infinera, where he served as CEO.
Previously held leadership roles at JDS Uniphase, BigBand Networks, Somera Communications, Lucent Technologies, and AT&T.
Heard holds Master of Science in Management from Stanford Graduate School of Business and MBA from University of Dayton.
Penguin Solutions powers AI factories for enterprises, sovereign AI initiatives, and neocloud providers.
Company is focused on convergence of memory and AI infrastructure.
“David brings experience scaling complex infrastructure platforms, optical networking technologies, and global operations,” said Kash Shaikh, President and CEO of Penguin Solutions. “As enterprises accelerate adoption of inference and agentic AI workloads, and demand for memory and AI infrastructure continues to grow, we believe David's strategic insight and industry expertise will be valuable to the continued advancement of our AI Factory Platform strategy and our work helping customers deploy AI at production scale.”
“I am honored to join the Penguin Solutions board at an important time for both the Company and the broader AI industry,” said Heard. “The Company's AI Factory Platform strategy, built on the convergence of memory and AI infrastructure, strategically positions Penguin Solutions to help customers address the growing demands of inference and next-generation AI deployments. I look forward to working with the board and management team to help drive long-term growth.”
Heard has served as President of Network Infrastructure at Nokia (NYSE: NOK) since June 2025. He joined Nokia in February 2025 following its acquisition of Infinera Corporation (formerly Nasdaq: INFN), where he served as Chief Executive Officer. Prior to joining Infinera in June 2017, Heard held leadership roles at several technology companies, including JDS Uniphase Corporation, BigBand Networks, Inc., Somera Communications, Inc., Lucent Technologies, and AT&T.
Heard also served as a member of the board of directors of Infinera Corporation from November 2020 to February 2025 and currently serves on the Max M. Fisher College of Business Alumni Board. He holds a Master of Science in Management as a Sloan Fellow from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, a Master of Business Administration from the University of Dayton, and a Bachelor of Arts in Production and Operations Management from The Ohio State University.
Penguin Solutions is a leading provider of memory and AI infrastructure, powering the AI factories of the future for enterprises, sovereign AI initiatives, and neocloud providers. Built on decades of engineering expertise at the intersection of memory and AI/HPC infrastructure, we bring together differentiated infrastructure software, advanced memory, compute systems, end-to-end services, and industry-leading partner solutions in a full-stack AI factory platform designed to help customers deploy and scale AI workloads with speed and precision.
TechIntelPro empowers B2B technology decision-makers with the latest industry trends, deep insights, leadership perspectives and actionable intelligence to drive both organizational and professional milestones, and thrive on the tech pulse.
