Cybersecurity-CTA
Info Card - Climate and Power
Info Card - Cyber
Alfred Chuang, M.S. ’86
Chairman and CEO, Magnet Systems, Inc.
Never give up and always see things through to completion. These life lessons were imparted by Alfred Chuang, founder and CEO of Magnet Systems, Inc., to graduating seniors at a UC College of Engineering.
“The UC College of Engineering has a unique culture that motivates engineers to try, often times fail, and re-start again,” Chuang says. “Years later, I found out that’s what tech entrepreneurship is all about.”
After graduating from a UC with a master’s degree in computer science in 1986, Chuang worked for Sun Microsystems, Inc., before co-founding an enterprise software company called BEA Systems. As BEA’s CEO and chairman of the board, Chuang oversaw a risky acquisition that resulted in the company missing its next earnings goal and losing 50 percent of its stock value.
Despite the significant setback, Chuang refused to give up.
“We worked extremely hard, and eventually our strategy prevailed. BEA became the biggest system supplier for e-commerce in the world,” he said.
In 2008, Chuang sold BEA to Oracle for $8.5 billion. Three years later, he launched Magnet Systems, Inc., a leader in conversational mobile interfaces. His company provides superior user experiences powered by chatbots and artificial intelligence that access information and perform updates to backend systems and cloud applications through a conversational mobile interface.
“I can’t think of a better research university to learn how to learn,” says Chuang. “Engineering is about a lifelong, never-ending, innovative journey – there is no better place than a UC College of Engineering to prepare for this journey.”