Socratic Partners portfolio company strengthens commercial leadership as it brings next-generation AI networking infrastructure to market
Eridu, the AI networking company building a clean-sheet switching architecture designed from the ground up for the demands of modern AI data centers, has appointed Stuart Krometis as Senior Vice President of Business Development. The appointment marks a significant step in Eridu’s commercial buildout as the company moves from its landmark $200 million Series A, led by Socratic Partners, toward full market deployment of its frontier switching platform.
Krometis brings deep commercial expertise across the networking, optics and semiconductor industries, having held senior roles at Cisco, Innovium, Marvell and most recently Upscale AI. His career spans the full arc of building and scaling global sales organisations, developing strategic customer relationships, and driving revenue growth at some of the industry’s most consequential companies.
An Eridu spokesperson said: “Stuart brings a wealth of experience building global sales organisations, developing strategic customer relationships and scaling businesses for networking, optics and semiconductor companies. His leadership and experience will help us continue to accelerate our momentum as we bring a new generation of frontier AI networking infrastructure to market.”
Commenting on his appointment, Krometis said: “I am super excited about the order of magnitude leap in performance, radix and efficiency that Eridu is bringing to market with their switching solutions. Drew Perkins has assembled a world-class team of technologists, investors and customers, and I am looking forward to bringing this innovative technology to our customers and proving this business can scale.”
Eridu was founded by Drew Perkins, co-founder of Infinera and Lightera Networks, to address what the company identifies as a fundamental architectural mismatch at the heart of the AI infrastructure buildout. Current network switches were designed for cloud data centers far smaller than today’s emerging AI factories, and existing architectures are only incrementally improving at a pace that cannot keep up with the explosive demands of AI workloads. Eridu is developing a clean-sheet network switch built around custom silicon, targeting hyperscalers, neoclouds, and sovereign cloud operators, with the goal of eliminating the switching bottleneck that constrains AI performance at scale.
Gregory Waters, Managing Partner at Socratic Partners, has described Eridu’s platform as one “that nearly all next generation AI will depend on,” reflecting the fund’s conviction in both the technology and the team behind it. Socratic Partners led Eridu’s Series A and holds a board position in the company.
Krometis’s appointment underscores Eridu’s readiness to move aggressively into the market. With the commercial and technical foundations now firmly in place, the company is positioned to accelerate customer engagement and scale its go-to-market operation ahead of product launch.
