Penguin Solutions has appointed David Heard to its board of directors as the company strengthens its AI Factory Platform strategy amid growing demand for AI infrastructure and memory solutions.
The appointment is effective immediately, the company said.
Heard currently serves as President of Network Infrastructure at Nokia, a role he assumed in June 2025. He joined Nokia following its acquisition of Infinera Corporation, where he previously served as Chief Executive Officer.
Penguin Solutions said Heard brings more than three decades of experience in technology infrastructure, networking, and operational leadership. His background includes managing large-scale global businesses and overseeing technology transformation initiatives across the communications and networking sectors.
The company is positioning its AI Factory Platform strategy around the convergence of memory technologies and AI infrastructure. The approach is aimed at supporting enterprise adoption of inference and agentic AI workloads that require large-scale computing, storage, and networking capabilities.
Kash Shaikh, President and CEO of Penguin Solutions, said Heard’s experience in infrastructure platforms, optical networking technologies, and global operations would support the company’s long-term AI infrastructure strategy.
He said demand for memory and AI infrastructure continues to increase as enterprises expand AI deployments at production scale.
Penguin Solutions has been focusing on enabling customers to deploy AI infrastructure for enterprise and industrial workloads. The company’s AI Factory Platform strategy is designed to address growing requirements around AI compute performance, scalability, and infrastructure integration.
In a statement, Heard said Penguin Solutions is operating at an important stage in both its corporate growth and the broader evolution of the AI industry.
He added that the company’s focus on combining memory and AI infrastructure technologies positions it to support increasing demand for inference and next-generation AI deployments.
Before joining Infinera in 2017, Heard held leadership positions at several technology companies, including JDS Uniphase Corporation, BigBand Networks, Somera Communications, Lucent Technologies, and AT&T.
Heard also previously served on the board of directors of Infinera Corporation between 2020 and 2025.
The appointment comes as AI infrastructure companies increasingly seek leadership expertise in networking, connectivity, and large-scale data infrastructure to support the rapid expansion of AI workloads.
Industry demand for AI-ready infrastructure has accelerated over the past year, driven by enterprise AI adoption, inference workloads, and the growing need for scalable compute and memory systems.
Penguin Solutions said the addition of Heard to its board is expected to strengthen the company’s strategic direction as it continues expanding its AI infrastructure capabilities and enterprise AI deployment offerings.
