Safi Qureshey is an entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist who co-founded AST Research and built it into one of the major personal computer manufacturers of its era. He is Co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Morphics.
Building AST Research
Born in Karachi, Pakistan, Safi came to the United States after earning a degree in physics from the University of Karachi, and went on to earn a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington.
In 1980 he co-founded AST Research in Irvine, California, with Albert Wong and Tom Yuen, starting with $2,000. The company took its name from the first letters of its founders' first names. AST began as a consulting firm, moved into add-on boards for IBM personal computers, and then began building its own PCs, shipping its first computer in 1986 and one of the first sub-$1,000 computers in 1990.
As Chief Executive Officer, Safi led AST through its 1984 public offering and onto the Fortune 500. The company reached $2.4 billion in revenue in fiscal 1994. Samsung Electronics acquired AST in 1997.
Investor and company builder
After AST, Safi turned to building and backing technology companies. He served as chairman of Quartics, an Irvine semiconductor company developing media processor chips, and in 2000 launched the Irvine Ventures incubator, working with UC Irvine and other local research institutions. He is co-founder of Skyline Capital Management, which invests in and builds technology companies, and he advises, serves on the boards of and invests in a number of startups. He also holds patents related to web audio broadcasting and playback on connected devices.
Public service
In December 1994, President Bill Clinton appointed Safi to the President's Export Council, which advises the President on export performance and works to expand U.S. exports. As a council member he traveled to emerging markets with U.S. Secretaries of Commerce to promote international business. In 2003 he was named to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's transition team in California.
Academia and the entrepreneurial community
Safi has served as a Regents' Professor at UC Irvine's Paul Merage School of Business, and he supports UC Irvine's Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. He was the founding president of the Southern California chapter of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs), a network of entrepreneurs and mentors.
Philanthropy
In 2000 Safi founded the Safi Qureshey Foundation to support socially and economically underserved children and adults. He founded the Active Learning Initiative Facility (ALIF) in Pakistan, which brought Sesame Street characters to the country to support early learning, and he is a trustee of Give2Asia, which promotes philanthropy in Asia. His gift to UC Irvine led to the Qureshey Research Laboratory, completed in 1997.
At Morphics
Safi brings the operating judgment of someone who has run a hardware supply chain at scale and sold through global distribution. As Co-founder, Chairman and CEO, he leads the company as it brings the Morphics memory management plane to inference providers and enterprises running AI on their own infrastructure.