Chris Gladwin is an American inventor, computer engineer and technology entrepreneur,Sramanamitra: Building a Fat Startup with a Massive Patent Portfolio: Cleversafe Founder Chris Gladwin (Part 1)
/ref>
/ref> who has founded or co-founded a series of tech-related companies including MusicNow,

Cleversafe IBM Cloud Object Storage is a service offered by IBM for storing and accessing unstructured data. The object storage service can be deployed on-premises, as part of IBM Cloud Platform offerings, or in hybrid form. The offering can store any typ ...

and Ocient.SmartBusiness: How Chris Gladwin founded a new storage process with Cleversafe
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Biography

Chris Gladwin was brought up to a middle-class family of medical professionals in the suburbs of

Columbus, Ohio Columbus (, ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities in Ohio, most populous city of the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 United States census, 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the List of United States ...

. Gladwin attended

Upper Arlington High School Upper Arlington High School is the sole high school in the Upper Arlington City School District in Upper Arlington, Ohio, a northwest suburb of Columbus, Ohio. It receives students from Jones Middle School and Hastings Middle School. The curr ...

in Columbus, Ohio and received a B.S. degree in

mechanical engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines and mechanism (engineering), mechanisms that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and engineering mathematics, mathematics principl ...

from

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

in 1986.Chris Gladwin: CEO and Co-Founder at Ocient
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Entrepreneurship

Gladwin started his career as emerging technologies manager at

Martin Marietta The Martin Marietta Corporation was an American company founded in 1961 through the merger of Glenn L. Martin Company and American-Marietta Corporation. In 1995, it merged with Lockheed Corporation to form Lockheed Martin. History Martin Marie ...

, a defense contractor which in 1995 merged with

Lockheed Corporation The Lockheed Corporation was an American aerospace manufacturer. Lockheed was founded in 1926 and merged in 1995 with Martin Marietta to form Lockheed Martin. Its founder, Allan Lockheed, had earlier founded the similarly named but otherwise-u ...

. He later created the first "workgroup storage server" while working for

Zenith Data Systems Zenith Data Systems Corporation (ZDS) was an American computer systems manufacturing company active from 1979 to 1996. It was originally a division of the Zenith Radio Company (later Zenith Electronics), after they had purchased the Heath Com ...

. In June 1996, Gladwin founded ''Cruise Technologies'', a developer and maker of wireless tablet computers. The company was later acquired by

NEC Corporation of America NEC Corporation of America (NECAM) is the principal subsidiary of the multinational IT company NEC in the United States. NEC Corporation of America was formed on July 1, 2006, from the combined operations of NEC America, NEC Solutions (America) ...

. ''MusicNow'', (formerly FullAudio), founded in 1999, was among the first internet music firms to launch a music subscription business with both composition and recording licenses from major music labels including EMI, Sony/BMG, Universal Music Group, and the Warner Music Group. The company reached 100,000 customers before being sold to Circuit City. Details of the sale were not disclosed. In 2016, Gladwin and Jeremie Bacon co-founded The Forge: Lemont Quarries, a 300-acre outdoor adventure park located 22 miles from Chicago. A number of sources describe the park as "the largest in North America with hundreds of possible routes". The park opened on July 17, 2020 in the midst of the coronavirus quarantine.

Cleversafe

Gladwin formed his next technology startup company, Chicago-based, Cleversafe, an object storage software and systems developer, which he founded in 2004 and served as CEO and President up through 2013 when he moved into a Chief Innovation role through to the company's sale to IBM in 2015. The company was originally based in IIT's

technology incubator A business incubator is an organization that helps startup companies and individual entrepreneurs to develop their businesses by providing a fullscale range of services, starting with management training and office space, and ending with venture ...

. The initial funding was provided by OCA Ventures. In 2011, it was also supported by

In-Q-Tel In-Q-Tel (IQT), formerly Peleus and In-Q-It, is an American not-for-profit venture capital firm based in Arlington, Virginia. It invests in companies to keep the Central Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence agencies, equipped with the lates ...

, a

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

firm related to the

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

In November 2015, Cleversafe was acquired by

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

for $1.3 billion and became a part of its

IBM Cloud Object Storage IBM Cloud Object Storage is a service offered by IBM for storing and accessing unstructured data. The object storage service can be deployed on-premises, as part of IBM Cloud Platform offerings, or in hybrid form. The offering can store any type ...

division. The offering was originally introduced by Cleversafe. Cleversafe sold an

object storage Object storage (also known as object-based storage or blob storage) is a computer data storage approach that manages data as "blobs" or "objects", as opposed to other storage architectures like file systems, which manage data as a file hierarchy, ...

system, which it called the Dispersed Storage Network or dsNet. As Jim Comfort, a general manager of IBM Cloud, admitted: "...the object storage offered by Cleversafe represented a gap in IBM's portfolio."

has since rebranded the company's products as IBM Cloud Object Storage.

Ocient

Ocient was co-founded in 2016 by Chris Gladwin, George KondilesPulse 2.0: Data Analytics Solutions Company Ocient Closes $15 Million In Funding
/ref> and Joe Jablonski, who was on Cleversafe's technical advisory board. In June 2020, Ocient raised additional $15 million with the help of OCA Ventures and In-Q-Tel.

Patents and awards

He is the inventor of more than 280 issued patents. He has also been the recipient of at least 16 industry awards for his work including the 2017 Peter Lisagor Award for best podcast single episode, "Cleversafe and the whale (How to survive being right)".

Philanthropy

In 2015, Gladwin donated $7.6 million to

Illinois Institute of Technology The Illinois Institute of Technology, commonly referred to as Illinois Tech and IIT, is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Tracing its history to 1890, the present name was adopted upon the m ...

with the main purpose of developing a computer science program in Chicago. He also sits on the board of trustees of the institution. He serves as co-chair of P33, a technology nonprofit founded to bolster Chicago's high-tech industry, and is on the board of a number of other organizations including SmartBet Charities and the Chicago Innovation Awards. In 2020, Gladwin helped to create and accomplish the concept for launching Illinois Tech College of Computing for further development of Chicago's tech industry. The college launched in March 2020, and classes began in June 2020.Chicago Business Journal: Illinois Tech launches College of Computing to boost local tech talent
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References

External links

*
Chris Glawin's patents
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gladwin, Chris 1964 births American mechanical engineers 21st-century American inventors American technology company founders American technology businesspeople Living people Martin Marietta people MIT School of Engineering alumni