Stephan Ouaknine is a Canadian business magnate, best known for his activities in the telecommunications industry and in renewable energy. A native of Montreal, Ouaknine has been active at international events including the Clinton Global Initiative, the Durban World Climate Summit and the Rio+20 World Green Summit, and has been named one of Canada's most notable entrepreneurs by Profit magazine. [1]
Ouaknine, the son of Moroccan and Egyptian immigrants to Canada, attended McGill University and moved to the Israeli start-up industry, [2] first joining a dot-com multimedia company then known as Geo-Interactive. As vice-president of business development, Ouaknine led the firm's 1996 IPO on the London Stock Exchange under the name Emblaze. [3]
In 1998, Ouaknine founded Airslide Systems, an advanced telecommunications equipment company, from his home in Tel Aviv. He raised over $36 million in venture capital for this firm from investors including George Soros, Sequoia Capital, Intel and SingTel. [4] The firm's assets were ultimately acquired by Dialogic Corporation. [5] [6]
After exiting Airslide, Ouaknine returned to Montreal to found Blueslice Networks in 2002. [7] [8] Blueslice produced evolved Subscriber Data Management (eSDM) solutions for mobile operators. [9] The firm was acquired in 2010 by Morrisville-based Tekelec. [10]
Subsequently, to Blueslice's acquisition, Ouaknine moved to the renewable energy industry. With partners including Jigar Shah, founder of SunEdison, founded in 1959, Eric Ouaknine and Vincent Martel, Ouaknine founded Inerjys, a renewable energy and clean technology growth equity fund. [11] At Inerjys, Ouaknine's activities have focused on a hybrid strategy of growth equity investment and infrastructure project finance, with the objective of accelerating the commercialization of innovative cleantech firms. [12] Ouaknine has promoted this investment thesis at major international events including the Durban World Climate Summit, [13] [14] the Clinton Global Initiative, [15] [16] and the World Green Summit, [17] a business conference affiliated with Rio+20. [18] In 2017, Ouaknine was a guide in the March of the Living for teenagers.