Sam Blackman, the chief executive and co-founder of AWS Elemental, died over the weekend of an reported cardiac arrest. He was 41.
“AWS Elemental has lost a passionate, visionary, and humble leader and the world has lost an inspiring human being dedicated to community," said a company spokesperson in a statement. "Sam’s spirit will always be at the core of what we do. Sam loved his work, but his greatest love was for his wife and children. Our thoughts are with his family and all those he touched on his journey.”
From its roots in hardware encoding, AWS Elemental expanded its portfolio of products and services to include live broadcast and VOD processing and workflow solutions.
BT recently used AWS Elemental Live video processing to power live streaming broadcasts of the UEFA Champions League final in both 4K and virtual reality. AWS Elemental is also a sponsor of the 4K 4Charity Fun Run at this month’s IBC show in Amsterdam.
Amazon purchased Elemental in 2015 for $296m, and the company recently changed its name to AWS Elemental.
Prior to co-founding Elemental in 2006, Blackman designed integrated circuit products for Pixelworks. Before joining Pixelworks, Sam held engineering positions at Silicon Graphics and Intel Corporation. He earned an M.B.A. from University of Oregon, an M.S. in electrical engineering from University of California at Berkeley and a B.S. in electrical engineering from Brown University.
Staff Reporter
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