IN Brief:
- Verena Lindner took over as Director Sales & Marketing at Inova Semiconductors on 1 October 2026.
- She joined the company in December 2025 after heading technical sales for autonomous mobility at Bertrandt.
- Inova is expanding its global sales operation around vehicle display links, intelligent lighting, and APXpress data connectivity.
Munich-based Inova Semiconductors has appointed Verena Lindner as Director Sales & Marketing, with responsibility for the company’s worldwide sales and marketing activities. She took up the position on 1 October 2026, succeeding Thomas Rothhaupt, who retired after 20 years at Inova. Rothhaupt will continue to support the business in the Korean market.
Lindner joined Inova in December 2025 as Senior Sales Manager, following a period as Head of Technical Sales at engineering services company Bertrandt, where she was responsible for the Autonomous Mobility division. Her new brief covers customer relationships, international sales development, and the positioning of Inova’s semiconductor technologies as vehicle manufacturers revise their electronic architectures.
The appointment comes during an expansion of Inova’s commercial team. The company has reported a 50% increase in sales and marketing staff to ten people, strengthening coverage of automotive customers and partner organisations. Its global remit spans established automotive display and lighting applications and the newer data connections required by distributed vehicle computing systems.
Inova, founded in 1999, develops semiconductors without operating its own wafer fabrication plants. Its business includes high-speed serial data links for vehicle displays and products for digitally controlled lighting and sensors. Those components typically enter programmes through vehicle manufacturers, electronic module suppliers, and engineering partners, whose design and qualification processes can extend across several development cycles.
APIX is one of the company’s established connectivity families. It carries video and display information between electronic units in a vehicle, with the specific number and resolution of displays depending on the link and device generation. Such connections allow display modules to be positioned away from the computing hardware that produces their content, making data transport and integration an important part of the electronic system design.
Inova’s ISELED technology addresses distributed lighting control through digitally managed RGB LEDs. Its related ILaS network is intended to connect lighting elements with sensors and actuators, allowing multiple functions to operate across a shared system rather than requiring entirely separate control arrangements. That combination supports applications such as coordinated vehicle interior lighting, where synchronisation, device addressing, and repeatable colour control are important.
A newer development is APXpress, a high-speed interconnect technology intended for zonal architectures and other data-intensive systems. Inova specifies link data rates of 4, 8, 16, and 32Gbit/s, together with support for up to 500 independent virtual data channels. The technology allows bandwidth to be allocated across those channels and is designed to provide controllable, deterministic latency. The figures describe the technology’s specified capabilities; implementation depends on the chosen link and system architecture.
Zonal vehicle architectures organise electronic functions around physical areas of the vehicle while coordinating processing and software across controllers. The approach changes the requirements placed on interfaces between sensors, displays, lighting networks, and central computing equipment. Inova’s portfolio therefore covers several different levels of the system: video transport through APIX, lighting and device communication through ISELED and ILaS, and higher-throughput connections through APXpress.
Lindner said: “I am delighted to take on this new responsibility. Together with our highly committed Sales & Marketing team, I look forward to further strengthening our relationships with customers and partners and actively shaping Inova’s continued development.” Her previous responsibility for technical sales in autonomous mobility gives the appointment a direct connection to the automotive design programmes served by Inova’s products.
Robert Isele, CEO of Inova, said the company was strengthening its commercial organisation as it expanded internationally. He connected Lindner’s appointment with the need to match the company’s semiconductor expertise to customer requirements and changes in automotive markets. Alongside that work, Rothhaupt’s continuing involvement in Korea provides continuity in an established regional relationship after his retirement from the leadership position.
The company’s wider market positioning includes the development of distributed data links beyond conventional display connections. In a semiconductor design business, support for system integration and qualification is closely linked to the commercial process: component suppliers must provide interface information, technical documentation, and a path for customers to evaluate devices within complete electronic architectures. Inova’s sales and engineering teams will continue to work across those disciplines under the new leadership structure.
Lindner is scheduled to represent Inova at electronica 2026 in Munich from 10 to 13 November, in Hall C5, stand 259. The company’s event programme includes demonstrations of APXpress, APIX3, and ISELED/ILaS applications. These will place its existing and emerging connectivity technologies before design customers at Lindner’s first electronica in the director’s role.
