Applied Optoelectronics, Inc. (AAOI)

Chih-Hsiang (Thompson) Lin founded Applied Optoelectronics in February 1997 and has been its president and chief executive since the start. He has chaired the board since January 2014, and chaired it twice before, from 2000 to 2002 and from 2008 to 2009. He came from research: a senior research scientist and then research associate professor at the University of Houston from 1994 to 2000, with a nuclear engineering degree from National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan and a doctorate in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Missouri. Stefan J. Murry, chief financial officer since August 2014 and chief strategy officer since December 2012, has been with the company just as long: he joined in February 1997 as a senior engineer in device packaging and ran sales and marketing from 2000 to 2012. 1234

The other executive officers are long-serving too. Hung-Lun (Fred) Chang joined in April 2001 from Hon-Hai Precision Industry in Taiwan and has been senior vice president and North America general manager since October 2012. Shu-Hua (Joshua) Yeh was president and chief executive of Global Technology, now the company's China subsidiary, from April 2002 until the company acquired it in March 2006, and has been Asia general manager since February 2015. David C. Kuo joined as assistant general counsel in May 2009 and has been senior vice president and chief legal officer since May 2023. On the record this site holds, all five executive officers have filed insider reports with the SEC since 2013, the year the company listed on Nasdaq. 5678910

Every director except Thompson Lin is independent under Nasdaq's rules, and William H. Yeh, who has run a real estate investment company since 1997, has been lead independent director since April 2018. Richard B. Black ran ECRM, a maker of laser-based imaging equipment, from 1983 until Eastman Kodak acquired it in 2021; Che-Wei Lin, a director since January 2014, has been president of ASMedia Technology, a chipset maker, since November 2007. Black, William H. Yeh and Min-Chu (Mike) Chen have filed as directors since 2013. Elizabeth Loboa, provost of Southern Methodist University, is not standing for re-election in 2026. The new nominee, Robert Flanagan, was put forward by an executive officer; he retired in February 2025 after a thirty-three year career in investment banking, most recently at Raymond James, a bank that has acted for the company in selling new shares. He first filed as a director in June 2026. 111213141591617181920

At the end of 2025 the company employed 4,691 people full time: 2,881 in China, 1,262 in Taiwan and 548 in the United States; 69 hold doctorates in science or engineering. Its research and development department counted 425, with teams in Texas, Georgia, China and Taiwan. No employee is covered by a collective bargaining agreement, though some at the China subsidiary belong to a trade union. At the Ningbo factory in China, workers commonly fail to return after the long Lunar New Year shutdown: the share who resigned or were let go in the first quarter was 7.9% in 2025, after 17.2% in 2024 and 53.8% in 2023, and training their replacements holds back first-quarter output. 2122232425