Hélder Fragueiro Antunes (born 6 July 1963)[1] is a Portuguese-American executive, computer scientist, entrepreneur, and former racecar driver.

[6][7] Hélder Manuel da Terra Fragueiro Marques Antunes was born on 6 July 1963 in Angra do Heroísmo, Terceira Island, Azores, to Armando Manuel Marques Antunes, an avionics and aerospace scientist from Torres Novas, and Carolina Bettencourt de Vasconcelos da Terra Fragueiro, a member of the Bettencourt family from Horta, Azores.

[14] Once in California, Antunes and his father took over the management and modernization of The Portuguese Tribune, a bilingual California-based newspaper serving the Luso-American diaspora.

[21] Antunes started his career in the Silicon Valley high-tech industry at Grid Systems Corporation as a support engineer, where he first met John Morgridge, CEO and Chairman of Cisco.

Portuguese newspaper Expresso stated that Antunes and Perreira wanted to "transform good ideas from entrepreneurs [in Portugal] into successful businesses [in Silicon Valley]".

Antunes and his team's work on the Dynamic Multipoint Virtual Private Network (DMVPN) earned them the 2004 Cisco Pioneer Award.

In February 2013, Antunes was a founding member of the Internet of Things World Forum Steering Committee, which "aims to accelerate innovation, inspire new ways to transform governments, industries and lives.

"[32] Antunes was a keynote speaker at the NASA-sponsored conference held at Ames Research Center, in July 2015, concerning the development of air regulations for drones.

[43] Antunes has played an important role in tying AICEP's INOV Contacto Program with Silicon Valley, with a strong emphasis on Cisco Systems.

[44][45] This program, which is mostly funded by the Portuguese government and European Union, takes recent university graduates from Portugal and trains them in international business and technology.

[55] He worked with Armando Pereira, Antunes often assist in the collaboration of businesses in Silicon Valley with start-ups within the tech industry and otherwise in the Azores.

"[57] The creation of a lobby in the Azores, according to Antunes, would allow the Azorean market to be open to the "authorities of foreign investment" and establish "contacts with the right people.