Co-founder of Intel Capital. One of the fathers of residential broadband. Author of The Flight of a Wild Duck. Fellow of the Italian Institute of Technology. Eighty-one years old and never more curious.
The first eighty years were about building the platform. Now the adventure begins.
Still helping create companies, and mapping what I believe is an emerging category: personal climate.
Two new books in progress, alongside weekly essays on technology, business, and life after 80.
Fellow of the Italian Institute of Technology. Using AI daily as a creative partner — including a digital twin of a palazzo born in 1731.
Living in Puglia with my wife Deborah, restoring a three-hundred-year-old palazzo, learning a new language and culture, composing music.
An improbable journey, briefly told.
I was born in San Francisco in 1945, a fourth-generation San Franciscan from a family of shopkeepers. School and I never got along — I graduated from what I call "Avram U." At eighteen I went to sea as a merchant seaman; by my mid-twenties I was building brainwave-measurement electronics at UCSF with biofeedback pioneer Joe Kamiya, then leading a thirty-person computer department at the Thoraxcenter in Rotterdam, where we built one of the world's first online intensive-care monitoring systems. Without ever attending university, I became an adjunct associate professor of medicine at Tel Aviv University.
In 1979 I crossed into the computer industry: I ran half of hardware engineering at Digital Equipment Corporation and led its entry into personal computing, then served as president of Franklin Computer. In 1984 I joined Intel, where I spent fifteen years as a corporate vice president. With Les Vadász I co-founded Intel Capital, which became the most successful corporate venture group in the industry, and I drove Intel's push to create residential broadband — the cable modem trials, the DOCSIS standard, @Home — helping bring high-speed internet into the world's living rooms. Forbes later ranked me number eight on its Midas List of technology investors.
Since leaving Intel in 1999 I have advised and invested in technology and healthcare companies, served on boards from Covad to PCCW, helped found the Longevity Center at Sheba Medical Center, and serve as Vice Chairman of Sommetrics. In 2021 I published my memoir, The Flight of a Wild Duck. In 2025 I was appointed the first Fellow of the Italian Institute of Technology. Today I live in Puglia, Italy with my wife Deborah, where I write, compose music, help build companies, and remain — at 81 — as curious as the boy who found everything interesting.
The full story on Grokipedia → · Wikipedia → · In my own words →
The same essays, two homes — pick the one you prefer.
Thoughts and experiences of an eighty-one-year-old Wild Duck. Two decades of essays on technology, business, and life.
My journey through life and technology, delivered by email.
A selection of conversations and coverage.
An improbable journey through life and technology: from school failure and merchant seaman to medical scientist, Intel vice president, co-founder of Intel Capital, and one of the fathers of residential broadband. USA Today once called me a "One Man Think Tank." The book explains how that unlikely flight happened.
About the book Read excerptsWhat people say about Avram and The Flight of a Wild Duck.
“You always needed a wild duck like Avram, a nonlinear thinker that stirred up the others. I always try to have an Avram on my team. Always. They disrupt and create.”— Andy Grove, 1999, as told to Renée James
“Avram was in the room where much of the technology that affects our lives was created. His own role in that was significant.”
— Steven Mayer, co-founder of Atari
“The story of an inquiring mind finding its way in the world from very modest beginnings and almost no expectations.”
— Robert X. Cringely, host of PBS’s Triumph of the Nerds
“That rare autobiography by a Silicon Valley legend that is about people and accomplishments rather than just making money.”
— Amazon reader review
“The book is a page-turner. I found myself eager to jump into each new chapter.”
— Amazon reader review
The conversation continues in all of these places.