CIQ Names Apple and Claris Veteran Peter Nelson as Chief Technology Officer

Veteran product and engineering executive joins open source pioneer to drive secure, high-performance software innovation for the AI era

RENO, Nev., July 24, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- CIQ, the founding support and services partner of Rocky Linux and a leader in building high-performance software infrastructure, today announced the appointment of Peter Nelson as chief technology officer. Nelson brings over two decades of product and engineering leadership, most recently serving as vice president of engineering at Apple's Claris organization and as chief product officer at Bowers & Wilkins.

As CTO, Nelson will shape CIQ's technical vision and innovation roadmap, scaling its solutions for performance-intensive workloads that span enterprise Linux, orchestration and AI.

"Peter has built and led some of the most high-impact engineering teams in the industry," said Gregory Kurtzer, founder and CEO at CIQ. "He's delivered category-defining products across consumer software, enterprise platforms, and embedded systems – all with an uncompromising commitment to user experience, product excellence, and execution. As CIQ scales to power the next era of enterprise AI and HPC, Peter's leadership will immediately accelerate our innovation and deliver unmatched value to our customers."

Before joining CIQ, Nelson led global product and engineering at Claris, overseeing the Claris FileMaker and Claris Connect platforms. Before that, he served as chief product officer at Bowers & Wilkins, steering the transformation of the company's product and software strategy. He also held engineering leadership roles at Apple, Eva Automation and Caavo, consistently delivering complex, high-quality products on time.

"CIQ is one of the most exciting companies in enterprise software today," said Nelson. "From Rocky Linux to the broader enterprise platform, the team is building secure, scalable infrastructure that meets the real-world demands of AI and data-intensive computing. I'm honored to join CIQ at this pivotal moment and help drive the next wave of open source innovation."

Nelson holds a Bachelor of Science in engineering from Harvey Mudd College and is widely recognized for aligning engineering excellence with strategic product outcomes. He has managed teams across the software stack, from low-level systems to user-facing applications, and has shipped more than a dozen successful products.

About CIQ
CIQ is building the next-generation secure and performant software infrastructure stack for the AI era. Founded in 2020 by open source ardent Gregory Kurtzer, CIQ helps organizations simplify, unify and democratize high-performance computing and enterprise IT. CIQ is the founding support and services partner of Rocky Linux and the creator of products like Fuzzball, Warewulf, Ascender and Rocky Linux from CIQ. The company provides scalable, open, infrastructure solutions that empower innovation – from the operating system up. Rooted in a community-first philosophy, CIQ is trusted by organizations modernizing for a future defined by data and AI inferencing. Learn more at https://ciq.com.

Media Contact
Cristin Connelly
cristin@cathey.co
Cathey Communications for CIQ
+1 (404) 931-6752

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SOURCE CIQ