Dr. Pehong Chen
Founder & Chairman
Dr. Pehong Chen is Founder & Chairman of BroadVision Group (BVG), a private asset management firm focusing on funding, incubating, and operating cutting-edge business ventures globally across artificial intelligence, cleantech, cloudtech, fintech, healthtech, medtech, biotech, and other innovative technology domains. BVG’s mission is create and nurture unique solutions through digital transformation, delivering compelling growth and profitability for businesses as well as happier work and healthier life for the people they serve.
Previously, Dr. Chen was CEO of BroadVision, Inc. (Nasdaq: BVSN), a highly-recognized pioneer in e-commerce, content management, and business social networking platform solutions, which he founded in 1993 and took public in 1996. At its peak, BVSN market cap exceeded $25 billion in 2000. For more than 25 years, BVSN has empowered thousands of enterprises worldwide to successfully transform and profitably operate their businesses digitally through high-output collaboration internally and high-touch engagement externally. BVSN was acquired by private equity firm ESW Capital in May 2020.
Prior to starting BroadVision, Dr. Chen was Vice President of multimedia technology at Sybase (acquired by SAP in 2010), responsible for the company’s digital initiatives. He founded and was President of Gain Technology, a leading supplier of hypermedia software platform and tools, where he spearheaded multimedia as a core technology for a new generation of business applications. Sybase, a leading supplier of database software, acquired Gain in 1992 for over $150 million.
A serial entrepreneur, dubbed “Master of the Universe” as one of the 25 most influential people in e-business by BusinessWeek, Dr. Chen is an active participant of the Silicon Valley success story. In addition to running and growing his own companies, he has also helped a number of startup ventures achieve great success with early-stage capital, mentoring, and business connections, including UT Starcom, NetIQ, Siebel Systems, Sina, UpWork, C3.ai, Somnics Health, Lucira Health, among others.
Currently, Dr. Chen is a board member of Weibo (Nasdaq: WB), China’s leading social media platform and microblogging network, and a trustee on the board of Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. He has been a member (since 1993) of and severed as Vice Chairman (2006-2010) for the Committee of 100, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the interest and standing of Chinese Americans in the US. He was on the board of Sina (Nasdaq: SINA), China’s largest Internet portal platform; Yongyou (SSE: 600588), China’s largest enterprise software company; Pactera (acquired by Blackstone in 2014), China’s largest IT out-sourcing firm; Fortinet (Nasdaq: FTNT), the world’s leading anti-threat cyber-security solutions provider, plus a number of startup companies. He was on the advisory board of several global private equity firms, including the Carlyle Group, and that of College of Engineering, UC Berkeley.
Dr. Chen received his PhD from University of California at Berkeley, MS from Indiana University, and BS from National Taiwan University, all in computer science. He is also a graduate of Stanford University’s executive program in business and management.