Full-Time
Sourcing Manager
Mechanicals
Nexthop.ai
201-500 employees
AI-driven cloud networking hardware and software
No salary listed
Santa Clara, CA, USA
In Person
 People & HR (1) |
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- 10+ years of progressive experience in supply chain, sourcing, commercial management, or contract manufacturing.
- 5+ years managing Tier 1 sheet metal and mechanical component manufacturers, including direct engagement with Asia-based contract manufacturers (China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand).
- Deep understanding of cost structures, bill of materials fundamentals, value engineering, and cost optimization.
- Experience with data center, consumer electronics, high-volume hardware, or advanced electromechanical system manufacturing.
- Strong background in new product introduction, new technology introduction, factory bring-up, and early supplier engagement.
- Proven ability to negotiate complex commercial agreements (master service agreements, statements of work, pricing frameworks, warranty, service terms).
- Strong program management skills — owning cross-functional actions, driving timelines, and influencing stakeholders.
- Experience building and managing supplier scorecards, performance metrics, and corrective action processes.
- Demonstrated ability to lead cost reduction programs and develop robust should-cost analyses.
- Ability to communicate clearly and influence at all levels—from engineers to executive leadership.
- Comfortable operating in ambiguity, rapid-growth environments, and fast-paced hardware development cycles.
- Strong cross-functional collaboration with Engineering, Technical Program Management, Quality, Operations, and Finance.
- Lead commercial management of global mechanical, thermal, and power manufacturers across new product introduction and mass production.
- Drive capital investment decisions to ensure scaling of production lines to meet long-term customer forecasts and upside potential.
- Negotiate and execute Master Purchase Agreements, Master Service Agreements, Manufacturing Service Agreements, material buying agreements, statements of work, pricing models, payment terms, flexibility terms, warranty, and service-level commitments.
- Develop structured negotiation strategies, including should-cost analysis, cost breakdown models, and scenario trade-offs.
- Partner with Legal to drive contract closure with the right safeguards (quality, delivery, workmanship, liability, termination, IP protection).
- Develop, drive cross-functional alignment, and execute sourcing and supply strategies to deliver company business objectives.
- Own supplier selection, business awards, and ongoing commercial governance for supplier partners.
- Lead cross-functional teams to assess supplier capabilities, footprint, cost structure, and performance to ensure alignment with product and volume roadmaps.
- Develop and implement supplier scorecards, KPI dashboards, and quarterly business reviews.
- Drive cost reduction programs through design-for-cost, value engineering, supply chain optimization, and competitive sourcing.
- Monitor supplier financial health, capacity, material constraints, labor conditions, and cost drivers.
- Partner with Hardware Engineering, Technical Program Management, Manufacturing Engineering, and Quality to ensure seamless NPI execution.
- Lead commercial readiness for NPI builds, including NRE negotiation, material liability, tooling, capex, and change management.
- Provide early cost insights during design (mechanical, electrical, PCB, and system-level bill of materials).
- Drive trade-off decisions balancing cost, quality, performance, and schedule.
- Support teammates for any escalations related to assigned suppliers (quality, pricing variance, build schedules, material availability, flexibility, liability exposure).
- Support escalation for yield, capacity, material shortages, and delivery issues.
- Ensure suppliers adhere to agreed upon pricing, quality standards, and operational KPIs.
- Lead structured review processes—weekly operations reviews, quarterly business reviews, and executive supplier meetings.
- Own cost models, cost reduction roadmaps, quarterly price reviews, and purchase price variance management.
- Build and maintain should-cost models for assigned components and suppliers.
- Partner with Finance on budgeting, accruals, forecast alignment, and capital planning.
- Experience with networking hardware, AI infrastructure hardware, or cloud-scale electromechanical systems.
- Knowledge of printed circuit board fabrication, assembly manufacturing, mechanical tooling, liquid-cooling, and precision manufacturing processes.
- Exposure to supply chain risk management, dual sourcing, and global capacity strategy.
- MBA or advanced technical degree in engineering or supply chain a plus.
Nexthop AI develops networking hardware and software designed for AI-driven cloud infrastructure. Its products combine specialized routers and software that optimize data-center networks for AI workloads, built through close co-development with large cloud operators. The company works by partnering with hyperscalers to tailor and deploy scalable networking solutions, rather than selling generic gear. This approach sets Nexthop AI apart from competitors by focusing on deep, collaborative development with cloud providers and delivering integrated hardware-software systems that fit specific AI cloud needs. The goal is to meet the rising demand for advanced cloud infrastructure by delivering efficient, scalable networking solutions through strategic partnerships and joint development.
Company Size
201-500
Company Stage
Series B
Total Funding
$610M
Headquarters
Santa Clara, California
Founded
2024
Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- Oversubscribed $500M Series B at $4.2B valuation led by Lightspeed and Andreessen Horowitz fuels expansion.
- Ethernet switching market for AI reaches $200B over next decade per 650 Group analysis.
- NH-4220 enables seamless 102.4 Tbps migration to 800G/1.6T AI clusters without rack changes.
What critics are saying
- Nvidia Spectrum-X erodes hyperscaler partnerships with GPU Direct in 6-12 months.
- Broadcom Jericho3-AI commoditizes Tomahawk silicon, slashing NH-4010 margins in 12-18 months.
- US-China restrictions halt Bengaluru exports, crippling 40% engineering for NH-5010 in 6-12 months.
What makes Nexthop.ai unique
- Nexthop AI launches Disaggregated Spine architecture co-developed with hyperscaler, cutting costs and power by 30%.
- NH-4010 delivers 51.2 Tbps with 15-20% power savings using Broadcom Tomahawk 5 silicon.
- Top 10 SONiC contributor and Governing Board member supports open networking for hyperscalers.
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Benefits
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Remote Work Options
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PTO/vacation
Hybrid Work Options
Wellness Program
Growth & Insights and Company News
6 month growth
↑ 0%1 year growth
↑ 5%2 year growth
↓ -6%Nexthop AI raises $500M at $4.2B evaluation, to build the most efficient AI infrastructure
Nexthop AI unveils transformative, industry-leading scale-out and scale-across switches engineered for Hyperscalers & NeoClouds. Nexthop AI Underlines focus on power efficient solutions, deployment velocity and open networking SANTA CLARA, Calif.-BUSINESS WIRE- Nexthop AI, the leading pioneer of highly efficient AI Networking, today launched a range of products for scale-out, scale-across and front-end applications for cloud and AI datacenters. The launch portfolio sets new standards for performance, power efficiency, and deployment speed - very critical metrics in AI infrastructure. Nexthop AI's highly efficient scale-out and scale-across AI networking portfolio Nexthop also unveiled the Disaggregated Spine architecture - a new, highly efficient, scale-across network design developed in collaboration with a large hyperscaler. This innovative architecture decomposes the traditional monolithic chassis running proprietary software into independent, optimized, functional tiers. It features a scale-across leaf tier (data center fabric facing) and scale-across spine tier (data center interconnect facing) offering deep buffers, line-rate MACsec encryption and expanded routing tables. This architecture delivers 30% lower cost and 30% lower power consumption than legacy chassis-based systems and facilitates adoption of open network operating systems such as SONiC. Driving the Future of Open Networking Nexthop AI is an active contributor to the open networking ecosystem, serving as a SONiC Governing Board member of the Linux Foundation. In a very short timeframe, Nexthop has risen to be amongst the top 10 global contributors to the SONiC project. Nexthop empowers customers to run their preferred version of a network operating system like SONiC or FBOSS on its switches. In addition, for the NeoClouds, Nexthop offers a hardened, supported, high-quality distribution of the Nexthop Network Operating System powered by SONiC. "We are delighted to see the tremendous contributions Nexthop has made to the open networking community in such a short time. They are partnering with the community on several new initiatives, including pioneering new concepts like the Disaggregated Spine. Their speed of execution, coupled with their unwavering dedication to customer success, is truly commendable," said Dave Maltz, Principal Network Architect for Azure Networking at Microsoft. Pioneering New Platforms for AI and Cloud Nexthop AI's launch portfolio sets new standards for performance, power efficiency, and deployment speed - very critical metrics in AI infrastructure. These platforms can run any version of SONiC or FBOSS that hyperscalers choose or are also available as a turnkey solution fully integrated with Nexthop NOS for NeoClouds. * NH-4010: The industry's lowest power 51.2 Tbps switch based on Broadcom Tomahawk 5 silicon. Its highly efficient system design is proven to save customers 15-20% power in like-for-like configurations, delivering 10s of Megawatts of total power savings at scale. * NH-4220: The industry's highest density 102.4 Tbps air cooled system based on Broadcom Tomahawk 6 silicon. These switches are specifically engineered to provide seamless migration from previous generations without requiring disruptive changes to rack or fiber plants, enabling rapid deployment of next-generation AI clusters. * NH-5010: The first deep-buffer, scale-across spine switch based on Broadcom Qumran 3D silicon, enabling the Disaggregated Spine architecture for leading Hyperscalers. "We are pleased to collaborate with Nexthop on SONiC and SAI-based architectures to deliver standards-based Ethernet switching solutions for deployments within and across data centers, serving our hyperscale and data center customers. Nexthop's deep system expertise and integration of our low-power switching silicon have enabled scalable, highly power-efficient solutions," said Asad Khamisy, senior vice president and general manager, Core Switching Group, Broadcom. Nexthop platforms offer advanced real-time telemetry for efficient congestion control, advanced load balancing and real-time layer 1 and optics monitoring - significantly improving overall network performance and link reliability. "Ethernet Switching is a key building block for AI Networking. Led by new AI and scale-across use case expansions, the market is poised to approach $200B over the next decade," said Alan Weckel, founder and technology analyst at 650 Group. "Nexthop AI is taking a unique co-development approach to product development and their initial platforms represent the start of a foundational portfolio that raises the bar to fundamentally address the efficiency, density, and reliability challenges to support 800G and 1.6T deployments." Availability and Additional Resources Nexthop AI's innovative platforms and software solutions are already shipping to leading Hyperscalers. Nexthop platforms also have a complementary optics portfolio with dedicated focus on Layer 1 validation that improves stability and deployment speed for customers. Its team will be at OFC 2026 in Los Angeles, demonstrating some of its AI solutions. To schedule a meeting with Connectweb, reach out to [email protected]. About Nexthop AI Nexthop AI is a cohesive team of seasoned industry experts, who through their collaborative product design as well as system and network engineering capabilities are building innovative networking products and solutions for Hyperscalers and NeoClouds. Nexthop is headquartered in Santa Clara with additional locations in Seattle, Vancouver, Dublin and Bengaluru, India. For more information visit http://nexthop.ai nexthop ai, the nexthop ai logo, and all related product and software names are trademarks of Nexthop Systems Inc. All other trademarks or service marks are the property of their respective owners. Product specifications and information are subject to change without notice. Contact details: Media Contact Arthi Ayyangar [email protected] +1 877 271 6550 * Images - product_stack_with_logo.jpg Nexthop AI's highly efficient scale-out and scale-across AI networking portfolio Download - Nexthop_AI_Logo_color_2x.jpg Download
Nexthop AI has raised $500 million in an oversubscribed Series B round, pushing its valuation to $4.2 billion. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with Andreessen Horowitz joining as a major investor, alongside Altimeter and existing backers. The Santa Clara-based company specialises in AI networking solutions for data centres, delivering switching solutions built on open-source operating systems such as SONiC and FBOSS. Founded by CEO Anshul Sadana, Nexthop serves hyperscalers and cloud providers with customised and off-the-shelf networking products. Alongside the funding announcement, Nexthop launched a range of products for cloud and AI data centres, focusing on performance, power efficiency and deployment speed. The company has offices in Seattle, Vancouver, Dublin and Bengaluru.
Nexthop AI has launched a range of switches for cloud and AI datacentres, claiming industry-leading performance and power efficiency. The portfolio includes the NH-4010, a 51.2 Tbps switch that saves 15–20% power compared to similar configurations, and the NH-4220, a 102.4 Tbps air-cooled system based on Broadcom Tomahawk 6 silicon. The company also unveiled its Disaggregated Spine architecture, developed with a large hyperscaler, which delivers 30% lower cost and power consumption than legacy chassis-based systems. Nexthop is a SONiC Governing Board member and ranks amongst the top 10 global contributors to the SONiC project. The platforms are already shipping to leading hyperscalers. Nexthop AI is headquartered in Santa Clara with offices in Seattle, Vancouver, Dublin and Bengaluru.
Nexthop AI, an AI infrastructure company, announced a $110 million Series A round on March 25, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and including Kleiner Perkins, Battery Ventures, and Emergent Ventures.