Neville Roy Singham | |
---|---|
Born | United States | May 13, 1954
Alma mater | Howard University [1] |
Occupation(s) | Thoughtworks chairman, Social activist |
Known for | Thoughtworks |
Parent | Archibald Singham (father) |
Neville Roy Singham (born May 13, 1954) is an American businessman and social activist. He is the founder and former chairman of Thoughtworks, an IT consulting company that provides custom software, software tools, and consulting services, which he sold to a private equity firm for $785 million in 2017. He consulted for Huawei and currently resides in Shanghai. [2]
A socialist and supporter of Maoism, according to The New York Times , Singham has helped fund causes and groups that promote pro-Chinese government messages.
Singham's father Archibald Singham was Sri Lankan, while his mother was Cuban. [3] [4] In his youth, Singham was a member of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, a Black nationalist–Maoist group, taking a job at a Chrysler plant in Detroit in 1972 as an activist in the group. [5] He attended Howard University before starting a consulting firm for equipment-leasing companies from his Chicago home. [5]
Singham founded Thoughtworks, a Chicago-based IT consulting company that provides custom software, software tools, and consulting services, in the late 1980s; it was incorporated in 1993. [6] [7]
From 2001 to 2008, Singham was a strategic technical consultant for Huawei. [5] [7]
By 2008, Thoughtworks employed 1,000 people and was growing at the rate of 20–30% p.a., with bases around the world. Its clients included Microsoft, Oracle, major banks, and The Guardian newspaper. [8] Singham owned 97% of the common stock of the company. [8] By 2010, its clients included Daimler AG, Siemens and Barclays, and had opened a second headquarters in Bangalore. [9]
In 2010, he opened Thoughtworks' Fifth Agile Software Development Conference in Beijing, where he spoke about his influence on Huawei. [5]
Singham sold the company to private equity firm Apax Partners in 2017 for $785 million, by which time it had 4,500 employees across 15 countries, including South Africa and Uganda. [6] [10] [11] : 1 Its chief scientist, Martin Fowler, wrote that Singham had not been involved in the running of the business for some years by that time:
"While I was surprised to hear that he was selling the company, the news was not unexpected. Over the last few years Roy has been increasingly involved in his activist work, and spending little time running ThoughtWorks. ... He's been able to do this because he's built a management team that's capable of running the company largely without him. But as I saw him spend more energy on his activist work, it was apparent it would be appealing to him to accelerate that activism with the money that selling ThoughtWorks would bring." [7] [12]
Singham has business interests in Chinese companies in the food and consultancy markets. [5] As of 2023, his office is in Shanghai, and is shared with the Maku Group, "whose goal is to educate foreigners about 'the miracles that China has created on the world stage'" and to which has given nearly $1.8 million funding. [13]
At Thoughtworks, Singham was a pioneer of agile software development [6] [14] and has helped popularize lean manufacturing, such as that used in the Toyota business model. [15]
Singham opposes proprietary software development and supports open access and the Creative Commons movement. In 2008, Singham said, "As a socialist I believe the world should have access to the best ideas in software for free. My goal is a technically-superior infrastructure to solve the world's problems." [8] [16] In the same interview, he described himself as a big fan of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, describing the country under his rule as a "phenomenally democratic place." He also described his admiration for China, where Thoughtworks had a growing operation, describing it as a model for governance: "China is teaching the West that the world is better off with a dual system of both free-market adjustments and long-term planning." [8]
According to his associates, Singham is an admirer of Maoism. [11] Tricontinental Institute's executive director, Vijay Prashad described Singham as “A Marxist with a massive software company!” [11]
He is a supporter of WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, speaking in his defense at a 2011 event hosted by the The Real News Network , alongside fellow activist software businessman Peter Thiel and former intelligence whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. [17] Alongside Ellsberg, he has also advocated for hackers such as Jeremy Hammond and Aaron Swartz—the latter, a friend of Singham's, having worked for him at Thoughtworks when he committed suicide while facing prosecution by the US government. [18] Singham described Swartz's prosecution as "part of a coordinated campaign to scare young Internet activists" in the age of WikiLeaks. [19]
In a 2013 interview, he advocated for frugal innovation, describing Thoughtworks' investments in such projects in India, Brazil and China. [20]
In a November 2022 report, Intelligence Online wrote that Singham was trying to establish a U.S.-based movement for peace in Ukraine and opposing NATO enlargement. [21]
In July 2023, Singham "joined a Communist Party workshop" about international promotion of the Chinese Communist Party. [11]
Singham is the principal financier of The People's Forum, a US nonprofit group that has been associated with organizing the 2024 pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses. [22] [23] [24]
In 2021, India's Enforcement Directorate named Singham in a money laundering case, alleging that he was the source of ₹ 380 million ($5 million) given to Indian news site People's Dispatch between 2018 and 2021, to promote a pro-Chinese narrative in the Indian media. [4] [25] The funds were alleged to have passed through a network of companies and NGOs including Delaware-based Worldwide Media Holdings (allegedly owned by Singham), and the Justice and Education Fund, GSPAN LLC and the Tricontinental Institute (which allegedly shared the same address) in the US, and Centro Popular de Mídias, Brazil. [25] [26] [16] [13]
According to a January 2022 report by New Lines Magazine of the Newlines Institute, a think tank led by Hassan Hassan at the Fairfax University of America, Singham has donated almost $65 million to non-profit organizations, including Code Pink. [5]
In August 2023, The New York Times reported that Singham works closely with the Chinese government and state media, and donates to various groups, news organizations and entities through non-profit groups and shell companies which spread pro-Chinese government messages. [11] The non-profits distributing the funding included the United Community Fund, Justice and Education Fund and People's Support Foundation, have addresses at UPS store mailboxes in Illinois, Wisconsin and New York, and headed by Jodie Evans or former ThoughtWorks employees. Funded groups include: an Indian-based independent news site, NewsClick, that the Times described as having "sprinkled its coverage with Chinese government talking points"; in South Africa the Nkrumah School, the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party and the New Frame news startup [27] (whose editor had resigned in 2022 citing its "soft coverage" of China and Russia); the Brasil de Fato newspaper in Brazil; and activist groups No Cold War, Code Pink, People’s Forum, and Tricontinental in the United States. In response to the Times report, Singham said that he was not a "member of, work for, take orders from, or follow instructions of any political party or government or their representatives". [11]
Following the August 2023 New York Times report, US senator Marco Rubio asked the United States Department of Justice to open an investigation into entities related to Singham for potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). [28]
Singham lives in Shanghai, China. [13] [5] He is married to Code Pink's Jodie Evans. Their wedding was attended by Amy Goodman, host of 'Democracy Now!'; Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream; and V, the playwright formerly known as Eve Ensler, who wrote 'The Vagina Monologues'. [11]
His son Nathan (Nate) Singham works for the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. [29] [5]
He currently lives in Shanghai. [2]
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. is a Chinese multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in Bantian, Longgang District, Shenzhen, Guangdong. It designs, develops, manufactures and sells telecommunications equipment, consumer electronics, smart devices and various rooftop solar products. The corporation was founded in 1987 by Ren Zhengfei, a former officer in the People's Liberation Army (PLA).
Sichuan University (SCU) is a public university in Chengdu, Sichuan, China. The university is affiliated with and funded by the Ministry of Education. The university is part of Project 211, Project 985, and the Double First-Class Construction.
Thoughtworks is a publicly-traded, global technology company with 49 offices in 18 countries. It provides software design and delivery, and tools and consulting services. The company is closely associated with the movement for agile software development, and has contributed to open source products. Thoughtworks' business includes Digital Product Development Services, Digital Experience and Distributed Agile software development.
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) is a partially state-owned publicly listed Chinese pure-play semiconductor foundry company. It is the largest contract chip maker in mainland China.
EPAM Systems, Inc. is an American company that specializes in software engineering services, digital platform engineering, and digital product design, operating out of Newtown, Pennsylvania. EPAM is a founding member of the MACH Alliance.
Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, author, journalist, political commentator, and Marxist intellectual. He is the executive-director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, Editor of LeftWord Books, Chief Correspondent at Globetrotter, and a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. Ideologically a Marxist, Prashad is well known for his criticisms of capitalism, neocolonialism, American exceptionalism, and Western imperialism, while expressing support for communism and the global south.
Jodie Evans is an American political activist, author, and documentary film producer.
iFlytek, styled as iFLYTEK, is a partially state-owned Chinese information technology company established in 1999. It creates voice recognition software and 10+ voice-based internet/mobile products covering education, communication, music, intelligent toys industries. State-owned enterprise China Mobile is the company's largest shareholder. The company is listed in the Shenzhen Stock Exchange with market capitalization at 25 billion RMB and it is backed by several state-owned investment funds.
Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co., Ltd., often shortened to Hikvision, is a Chinese state-owned manufacturer and supplier of video surveillance equipment for civilian and military purposes, headquartered in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. Due to its alleged involvement in mass surveillance of Uyghurs, the Xinjiang internment camps, and national security concerns, the company has been placed under sanctions from the U.S. and European governments.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) is a communist party in the United States. PSL was established in 2004, when its members split from the Workers World Party. The group believes that a socialist revolution is necessary to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism. The organization works toward this end by organizing and participating in local protests, running candidates in elections, and political education favoring a revolutionary socialist vanguard party.
The Huawei Mate series, formally the Huawei Ascend Mate series, is a line of high-end HarmonyOS-powered phablet smartphones produced by Huawei, and is one of their flagship products along with the Pura series.
DataCore, also known as DataCore Software, is a developer of software-defined storage based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, United States. The company is a pioneer in the development of SAN virtualization technology, and offers software-defined storage solutions across core data center, edge and cloud environments.
The Huawei Pura series is a line of high-end and medium-range HarmonyOS smartphones produced by Huawei. The P series was formerly marketed as part of Huawei's larger Ascend brand, and some models were called P smart.
The Chinese multinational information technology and consumer electronics company Huawei has faced numerous criticisms for various aspects of its operations, particularly in regards to cybersecurity, intellectual property, and human rights violations.
HarmonyOS (HMOS) is a distributed operating system developed by Huawei for smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, smart watches, personal computers and other smart devices. It has a multi-kernel design with dual frameworks: the operating system selects suitable kernels from the abstraction layer in the case of devices that use diverse resources. The operating system was officially launched by Huawei in August 2019.
The United States government applies economic sanctions against certain institutions and key members of the Chinese government and its ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), certain companies linked to the People's Liberation Army (PLA), and other affiliates that the US government has accused of aiding in human rights abuses. The US maintained embargoes against China from the inception of the People's Republic of China in 1949 until 1972. An embargo was reimposed by the US following the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. From 2020 onward, the US imposed sanctions and visa restrictions against several Chinese government officials and companies, in response to the persecution of Uyghurs in China, human rights abuses in Hong Kong and Tibet, military-civil fusion, support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and fentanyl production.
The Entity List is a trade restriction list published by the United States Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), consisting of certain foreign persons, entities, or governments. It is published as Supplement 4 of Part 744 of the Code of Federal Regulations. Entities on the Entity List are subject to U.S. license requirements for the export or transfer of specified items, such as some U.S. technologies. However, U.S. persons or companies are not prohibited from purchasing items from a company on the Entity List. Being included on the Entity List is less severe than being designated a "denied person" and more severe than being placed on the Unverified List (UVL).
Internet Protocol Video Market (IPVM) is a security and surveillance industry research group and trade publication based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania that focuses on reviewing and reporting on video surveillance technology.
The Chinese semiconductor industry, including integrated circuit design and manufacturing, forms a major part of mainland China's information technology industry.
OpenAtom OpenHarmony, or abbreviated as OpenHarmony (OHOS), is a family of open-source distributed operating systems based on HarmonyOS derived from LiteOS, donated the L0-L2 branch source code by Huawei to the OpenAtom Foundation. Similar to HarmonyOS, the open-source distributed operating system is designed with a layered architecture, which consists of four layers from the bottom to the top, i.e., the kernel layer, system service layer, framework layer, and application layer. It is also an extensive collection of free software, which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems via Kernel Abstraction Layer subsystems.