# Chenggong Charles Fan

> Chenggong Charles Fan is the co-founder and CEO of MemVerge, an electrical engineer and repeat founder whose work has repeatedly centered on making computing systems more reliable, flexible and memory-centric. His Caltech dissertation helped seed Rainfinity, acquired by EMC in 2005; he later established EMC's China R&D center, built VMware's storage business around Virtual SAN, served as CTO of Cheetah Mobile and returned to his Caltech network to start MemVerge. The company's focus has moved from persistent memory and CXL infrastructure toward open-source memory for AI agents, but Fan's underlying question has remained strikingly consistent: how can software preserve useful state when machines, workloads and platforms change?

- **Role:** Co-founder and CEO at MemVerge
- **Organizations:** MemVerge, Rainfinity, EMC, VMware, Cheetah Mobile, California Institute of Technology, The Cooper Union
- **Education:** B.E. in Electrical Engineering, summa cum laude, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, M.S. in Electrical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, California Institute of Technology
- **Known for:** Co-founded Rainfinity and served as CTO before its 2005 acquisition by EMC., Established and led EMC's China R&D center., Founded VMware's storage business unit and helped deliver the Virtual SAN product.

## Career timeline

- **1999** — Co-founded Rainfinity, a Caltech spin-off focused on software for reliable internet and file infrastructure, and served as CTO.
- **2001** — Completed his Caltech Ph.D. dissertation, 'Fault-tolerant cluster of networking elements.'
- **2005** — Rainfinity was acquired by EMC.
- **2006** — Appointed to lead EMC's new China software development center.
- **2010s** — Served as VMware SVP and general manager, formed its storage business unit and helped deliver Virtual SAN; also led storage and big-data businesses.
- **2016** — Became chief technology officer of Cheetah Mobile.
- **2017** — Co-founded MemVerge with Shuki Bruck and Yue Li and became CEO.
- **2020** — MemVerge announced a $19 million Series B led by Intel Capital; disclosed funding totals later reached $43.5 million.
- **2025** — MemVerge launched MemMachine as an open-source AI memory layer and hosted its inaugural AI Memory Forum with AWS.
- **2026** — Co-authored the MemMachine research paper on ground-truth-preserving memory for personalized AI agents.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Rainfinity and served as CTO before its 2005 acquisition by EMC.
- Established and led EMC's China R&D center.
- Founded VMware's storage business unit and helped deliver the Virtual SAN product.
- Co-founded MemVerge in 2017 and raised $43.5 million in disclosed funding, including a $19 million Series B.
- Helped guide MemVerge from persistent-memory virtualization into CXL, AI infrastructure and open-source AI-agent memory.
- Co-authored research in distributed systems and, in 2026, a paper describing the MemMachine AI memory system.

## Latest updates

- **2026-04** — Fan co-authored 'MemMachine: A Ground-Truth-Preserving Memory System for Personalized AI Agents,' submitted to arXiv.
- **2026-05** — Fan shared MemMachine v0.3.0, including a context-retrieval agent, integrations and an AI-app memory plug-in, on LinkedIn.
- **2025-11** — MemVerge and AWS hosted the inaugural AI Memory Forum at the Computer History Museum; Fan appeared as a presenter.
- **2025-09** — MemVerge launched MemMachine as an open-source AI memory layer with enterprise offerings.
- **2025-01** — Fan presented MemVerge's approach to AI infrastructure automation and GPU resource utilization at AI Field Day 6.

## Links

- Website: https://memverge.ai
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlesfan1
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/MemVerge
- GitHub: https://github.com/MemVerge
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/MemVerge-1335914883235732/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/chenggong-fan
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-18