# Khachik Sahakyan

> Khachik Sahakyan is the co-founder and CEO of Grovf, a deep-tech hardware company building AI back-end fabric IP, chiplets and 400/800 Gbps SmartNICs that move data between AI accelerators with sub-2 microsecond RDMA latency. A microwave engineer and former Yerevan State University lecturer turned founder, he splits Grovf between Newark, California and Yerevan, Armenia, and has spent the last several years convincing data-center buyers that the path to scale is in silicon, not software.

- **Role:** Co-Founder & CEO at Grovf
- **Organizations:** Grovf, Yerevan State University (former), Ovak Technologies (former)
- **From:** Armenia
- **Nationality:** Armenian
- **Education:** Microwave Engineering & Photonics, Yerevan State University, Business Administration, University of California, Berkeley
- **Known for:** Built Grovf from a two-person Yerevan startup to a ~60-person hardware company with offices in Newark, California., Shipped hardware database prototype achieving 10x faster transactions and 100x faster response than software equivalents., Delivered RDMA FPGA IP with under 2 microsecond latency at 800 Gbps per port.

## Career timeline

- **pre-2017** — Senior System Engineer and Team Lead at Ovak Technologies; university lecturer at Yerevan State University teaching computational physics and scientific experiment automation.
- **2017** — Co-founded Grovf in February with Artavazd Khachatryan to tackle IIoT big-data storage in hardware; selected as one of 15 winners of the EU4Business SMEDA Innovation Matching Grant.
- **2017** — Presented Grovf at IFA Berlin via the Armenian Startup Academy Berlin program; partnered with National Instruments for prototyping.
- **2018** — Closed pre-seed round led by SmartGateVC with Granatus Ventures and US angels; received two EU innovation grants totaling roughly $120,000.
- **2019** — Launched JVM-acceleration SaaS on AWS using Xilinx Alveo boards; kept Armenia HQ while opening US operations.
- **2021** — Raised a $240K seed round (per Apollo records), bringing total funding to roughly $360K.
- **2024-2026** — Pivoted Grovf's product line toward AI back-end fabric: 400/800 Gbps SmartNICs, RDMA IP, and UCIe chiplets for AI accelerator scale-out.

## Achievements

- Built Grovf from a two-person Yerevan startup to a ~60-person hardware company with offices in Newark, California.
- Shipped hardware database prototype achieving 10x faster transactions and 100x faster response than software equivalents.
- Delivered RDMA FPGA IP with under 2 microsecond latency at 800 Gbps per port.
- Won the EU4Business SMEDA Innovation Matching Grant among 15 selected teams.
- Secured backing from SmartGateVC, Granatus Ventures, and US-based angel investors.

## Latest updates

- **2026-06** — Grovf is publicly hiring RTL design and verification engineers and marketing its 800 Gbps AI back-end fabric IP, chiplets, and Scale-Out NIC.

## Links

- Website: https://grovf.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/khachiksahakyan
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/grovf_company
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/grovfcompany/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/khachik-sahakyan
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-30