Best Startup
At Best Startup US we track over 1,000,000 US startups and over 3 million people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top California based Founder operating in the Robotics space. If you think a Founder is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.us.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Pieter Abbeel
Founder, President, Chief Scientist of Covariant
Pieter Abbeel joined covariant.ai as Co-Founder, President, Chief Scientist in 2017. Pieter Abbeel is Professor at UC Berkeley [2008- ], Co-Founder covariant.ai [2017- ], Co-Founder Gradescope [2014- ], Research Scientist at OpenAI [2016-2017], Founding Faculty Partner AI@TheHouse, Advisor to many AI/Robotics start-ups. He works in machine learning and robotics, in particular his research focuses on making robots learn from people (apprenticeship learning), how to make robots learn through their own trial and error (reinforcement learning), and how to speed up skill acquisition through learning-to-learn (meta-learning). His robots have learned advanced helicopter aerobatics, knot-tying, basic assembly, organizing laundry, locomotion, and vision-based robotic manipulation. He has won numerous awards, including best paper awards at ICML, NIPS and ICRA, early career awards from NSF, Darpa, ONR, AFOSR, Sloan, TR35, IEEE, and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). Pieter’s work is frequently featured in the popular press, including New York Times, BBC, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, Wired, Forbes, Tech Review, NPR.
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About Covariant, University of California Berkeley: Covariant is an AI Robotics company developing a universal AI that enables robots to see, reason, and act on the world around them.
Jiajun Zhu
Co-Founder and CEO of Nuro
Jiajun Zhu is a co-founder of Nuro. he used to be the principal software engineer of Google. He eraned his master’s degree ta University of Virginia and his bachelor’s degree at Fudan University.
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About Nuro: Nuro develops and operates a fleet of electric self-driving vehicles that are built to deliver assorted local goods.
Aditya Singh
Co-Founder and Managing Director of Neotribe Ventures
Adit is a hands-on early stage company builder having helped build three startups with an operating career spanning 15 years before entering venture capital. From 2013 to 2017, he led the b2b/enterprise practice at Foundation Capital as a Partner investing across the stack from enterprise applications, cloud infrastructure, analytics and cybersecurity. Adit graduated from University of Illinois (BS/MS in Computer Engineering) and from the University of Chicago (MBA). He started his career as an engineer at Growth Networks (a NEA/Lightspeed company) which was acquired by Cisco for $355m. At Cisco, he led the datacenter infrastructure team as a senior technical leader and delivered several products (converged servers, switches and edge routers) for data center infrastructure. He co-founded a networking appliance company, Bitsplay Systems that streamed video from data centers, out of the EIR program at Foundation Capital. In 2008, he joined Enphase Energy (networked solar microinverters), a Series A startup as their first product manager through IPO on the NASDAQ in 2012. When Enphase went public, Adit was Senior Director of Product Management and responsible for the main microinverter business. He is extremely connected in the the deeply technical circles of silicon valley and has the reputation of building companies from the bottom up by working hand in hand with founders.
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About Bloomreach, Cockroach Labs, Neotribe Ventures, Phantom: Neotribe Ventures is an early stage-venture capital firm which invests in breakthrough technologies that stretch the imagination.
Steven Bragonier
CFO and Co-Founder of Neotribe Ventures
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About Gainspeed, Neotribe Ventures: Neotribe Ventures is an early stage-venture capital firm which invests in breakthrough technologies that stretch the imagination.
Faraz Sayyed
Founder of VIVID Technologies
Omer Khan is one of the co-founders for Vivid technologies. He has over 10 years of experience working with several blue chip telecom companies and banks, including AT&T, Barclays, Telenor, Apple and BNYM. He has been project managing and leading the telephony infrastructure that runs a business of more than $200 M. His last engagement was for Barclays UK where he was leading the Contact Center infrastructure engineering team responsible for implementing speech recognition IVRs. In recent past, Vivid technologies has been incubated by Microsoft Ventures, UK and now a part of acceleration program in Silicon valley (Blackbox). Omer has also published research papers on SIPs weaknesses and how to mitigate them. He has also been a speaker at Black Hat, Chase and HITB Malaysia. Interestingly Omer is not only a techy/co-founder but also a part-time musician who has played with mainstream bands (Noori, MHB, EP) in Pakistan and a half baked writer. He has assisted in scripts for 2 feature films in Pakistan (Khuda key liye, Bol).
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About Living Amsterdam, Living Amsterdam, Notion Technologies, systemini internet technologies, VIVID Technologies: VIVID Technologies are transforming the traditional customer service experience.
Erik Palitsch
Co-Founder & CEO of Freeform
Erik Palitsch is a Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Freeform Future.
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About Freeform: Stealth-mode additive manufacturing company.
Thomas Ronacher
Co-Founder & CTO of Freeform
Thomas J. Ronacher is a Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Freeform Future.
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About Freeform: Stealth-mode additive manufacturing company.
Eugene Izhikevich
Co-Founder & CEO of Brain Corp
Eugene M. Izhikevich is Chairman and CEO of Brain Corporation in San Diego and was formerly Senior Fellow in Theoretical Neurobiology at the Neurosciences Institute, San Diego.He is editor-in-chief of Scholarpedia, the free peer-reviewed.
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About Brain Corp, Scholarpedia: Brain Corp develops core technology for the robotics industry.
Allen Gruber
Co-Founder, Executive Vice President, Board Member of Brain Corp
Allen Gruber is a neuroscientist, physician, and founder of several successful technology companies. In 1993, Gruber co-founded INTERVU, Inc, a streaming video provider, which went public and was sold to Akamai Technologies, Inc.(NASDAQ: AKAM) for $2.8 billion. He founded Kintera, Inc., in 1999, and later served as Executive Vice President in charge of Engineering for Kintera, Inc., an online fundraising and marketing platform for nonprofit organizations. Kintera reached a market capitalization of $500 million and was sold to Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ: BLKB). Gruber graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Biochemistry and also with an MD. He attended Washington University for clinical and research training and was on the faculty of the University of Texas. Gruber was a Senior Fellow in the Institute of Neural Computation at UCSD in 2007. His professional memberships include the American Academy of Neurology, the Society for Neuroscience, and IEEE.
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About Brain Corp, Intheon: Brain Corp develops core technology for the robotics industry.
Bay McLaughlin
Co-Founder of Brinc
I’ve supported technology startups for the last 13 years. Half of this time was spent at Apple as a founding team member of their global SMB channel and as the founder of their first Entrepreneurship Evangelism channel. To support startups at Apple, I partnered with the world’s best founders, venture capitalists, incubators and accelerators to identify and solve their most pressing strategic issues. My team at Apple grossed more than $350M USD in sales and is still the #1 team globally in Apple SMB’s division. The other half of my career has been spent inside of or founding startups, two of which failed, one of which exited successfully. Currently, I have equity positions in 143 companies across 35 countries, ranging from B2B SaaS platforms to the number one website in surfing and medical and drone technologies that improve lives and our world every day (plus two Unicorns ;-). Most recently, I’ve co-founded Brinc.io, a global venture accelerator platform. We have 9 accelerator programs, offices in 6 countries, and 2 venture capital funds. We are also one of the top 10 largest early-stage venture capital firms globally. I also serve on the Boards of Brinc, Soundbrenner, SilentMode (combined worth more than $100M and growing fast) and the not for profit entrepreneurship society called EYES. I create content from the heart and only want to do one thing well… provide value to everyone that interacts with me and help everyone out just like others have done for me.
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About Brinc: Brinc is a leader in global venture acceleration, operating 18 multidisciplinary accelerator programs in 7 countries.
Ben Marcus
Co-Founder of AirMap
Ben Marcus is an aviation expert and executive. Prior to AirMap, he co-founded and was CEO of jetAVIVA, the world’s largest light business jet sales company. He started his career as a flight instructor and later became a flight test engineer. Ben currently serves on the board of Angel Flight West. He is an FAA-certified Airline Transport Pilot and Flight Instructor with over 4,500 hours of flight experience and ratings in airplanes, helicopters, seaplanes, gliders, and six types of jets.
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About AirMap, UP Partners: AirMap operates as an airspace services platform for unmanned aircraft.
Jordan Kretchmer
Co-Founder and CEO of Rapid Robotics
Jordan Kretchmer is the Founder and CEO of Livefyre. Livefyre brings the social web right to any publisher or brand site to drive real-time conversations and community engagement. The company’s suite of real-time products include LiveComments, LiveBlogs, and social content curation, and Livefyre’s customers include FOX News, CBS, Dow Jones, AOL, TIME Magazine, and thousands of others. Kretchmer founded the San Francisco based startup in December 2009, and has overseen its growth to the 7th largest site network on the web, delivering 1 billion live content streams every month. Before launching Livefyre, Kretchmer was the Vice President of Brand at Current TV where he led brand redevelopment for the media company. Previously, he was the Digital Creative Director at Butler Shine Stern and Partners, and Vice President/Associate Creative Director at Mullen Advertising. Kretchmer lives in San Francisco.
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About Livefyre, Rapid Robotics: Rapid Robotics provides out-of-the-box automation for manufacturers.
Kai Yu
Founder & CEO of Horizon Robotics
Dr. Kai YU is the founder and CEO of Horizon Robotics Inc. He is a recognized pioneer and leader in deep learning and artificial intelligence. He was the founder and Head of Baidu Institute of Deep Learning (IDL), the first and most established artificial intelligence R&D center in China industry. Dr. Yu is elected to China “Top 1000 Talents”, a prestigious group of technology leaders of the country.
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About Horizon Robotics: Horizon Robotics focuses on artificial intelligence computing for smart mobility.
Chang Huang
Co-Founder & VP of Algorithm of Horizon Robotics
Chang Huang was Principle Scientist and Architect (T10) at Baidu, one of core leaders in founding IDL. He is one of the top researcher in computer vision, machine learning, pattern recognition and information globally. As a renowned deep learning expert in both industry and academia, he has over 4400 citations and owns 6 US patents. The face recognition system he developed was adopted by a wide range of digital cameras (80 percent of the market) and image management applications including Apple’s iPhoto. At Baidu, he led the image technology team at IDL launched multiple important products including a full-web face search engine, similar image search, text recognition in natural scenes, mobile image search, image smart match, etc. Prior to Baidu, Dr. Huang served as a researcher at the University of Southern California and NEC Labs America. He received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. Degree from the Department of Computer Science and Technology at Tsinghua University, where he received many awards including MSRA Fellowship of 2006, Tsinghua’s Excellent PhD Thesis Award of 2007, Beijing’s Excellent PhD Thesis Award of 2007, etc. Dr. He also won the 2012 1st Excellent Research Achievement Award with his project “Theory and Methods of Geometrical Computation in Visual Media” and participated in China’s 973 Plan project “3D-Space Oriented Theory and Methods of Information Processing of Internet Information in Chinese.
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About Horizon Robotics: Horizon Robotics focuses on artificial intelligence computing for smart mobility.
Ming Yang
Co-Founder & VP, Software of Horizon Robotics
Ming Yang is one of the founding members of the Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR) and a former senior researcher at NEC Labs America. Dr. Yang is a well-recognized researcher in computer vision and machine learning. His research interests include object tracking, face recognition, massive image retrieval and multimedia content analysis. Dr. Yang owns 14 US patents, and has over 20 publications in top conferences like CVPR and ICCV and 8 publications in the top international journal T-PAMI with more than 5300 citations. During his tenure at Facebook, Dr. Yang led the deep learning research project “Deep Face”, which had a significant impact in the deep learning research community and got widely reported by various media including Science Magazine, MIT Tech Review and Forbes. Dr. Yang has served as a member of the program committee for multiple top international conferences including CVPR, ICCV, NIPS and ACMMM. He has also been a reviewer for several top international journals including T-PAMI, IJCV and T-IP. As the leader of the NEC-UIUC team, Dr. Yang and his team achieved the best result in the TRECVid 2008 and 2009 Event Detection Evaluation. He was also a member of the NEC team to win the 1st place in the ImageNet 2010 Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge. Moreover, Dr. Yang is the owner of 14 US patents. Dr. Ming Yang received his B.Eng. and M.Eng. Degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering at Tsinghua University and Ph.D. degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Northwestern University.
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About Horizon Robotics: Horizon Robotics focuses on artificial intelligence computing for smart mobility.
Annie Tao
Co-Founder & VP, Operations of Horizon Robotics
Annie Tao has extensive experiences in top-notch technology and internet companies globally, with in-depth strategic thinking and analytic capabilities of the industry in both US and China. Prior to Horizon Robotics, she worked in Google Sales group at Silicon Valley and Baidu in both US lab and China. She led a number of global projects at Google, including product search operations optimization and key payment product operations at launches. TAO received Master’s Degree in Marketing from Northwestern University，Chicago, and was exchanged to Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania during undergraduate.
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About Horizon Robotics: Horizon Robotics focuses on artificial intelligence computing for smart mobility.
Jennifer Gill Roberts
Co-Founder, Managing Partner of Grit Ventures
Startup investor, entrepreneur and technologist with a passion for launching startups, both for-profit and non-profit in Silicon Valley. Co-Founder, Managing Partner, Grit Ventures. Grit believes artificial intelligence is changing the world. We fund pre-seed and seed-stage Robotics + AI startups that are disrupting major verticals like construction, transportation, manufacturing, agtech, and logistics.
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About Grit Ventures: Grit Ventures invests the Clean Machine Revolution with investment hubs in the Bay Area, Denver, Austin, and Pittsburgh.
Kelly Coyne
Co-Founder, Managing Partner of Grit Ventures
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About Grit Ventures: Grit Ventures invests the Clean Machine Revolution with investment hubs in the Bay Area, Denver, Austin, and Pittsburgh.
Jorge Heraud
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Blue River Technology
Jorge is the co-founder and CEO of Blue River Technology Inc. (www.bluerivert.com), a start-up company that intends to revolutionize weeding and dramatically reduce chemical use.
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About Blue River Technology: Blue River Technology employs computer vision and robotics technologies to build intelligent solutions for the agricultural industries.
Sasan Amini
Co-Founder and CEO of Clear Labs
Sasan combined his academic expertise and passion for healthy living when he co-founded Clear Labs with a mission to set a new paradigm for food safety and quality. Prior to serving as the CEO of Clear Labs, he worked in the Advanced Research department at Illumina. Sasan earned his PhD in Genomics from Princeton and holds multiple patents and publications in the field.
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About Clear Labs: Clear Labs is a provider of a fully-automated sequencing platform for turnkey diagnostics.
Vikas Gupta
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Wonder Workshop
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About Wonder Workshop: Wonder Workshop provides a platform that makes programming fun and accessible for children while they play.
Abraham Bachrach
Founder, CTO of Skydio
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About Skydio: Skydio uses artificial intelligence to create flying drones that are used by consumer, enterprise, and government customers.
Dileep George
Co-Founder of Vicarious
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About Vicarious: Vicarious is an artificial intelligence company that uses the computational principles of the brain to develop general intelligence.
Vitaliy Goncharuk
CEO and Founder of Augmented Pixels
I am CEO and founder of Augmented Pixels, based in Palo Alto, California, which provides software for simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) for augmented reality(AR/VR Glasses) and autonomous navigation(Robots / Drones). In 2016 I was honored to be a mentor and a judge at NASA(USA) Space Race project (link: http://bit.ly/2k1pTRX ) and was also asked to report in front of the board of directors of National Academy of Sciences (USA) about the long-term impact of Artificial Intelligence in several industries(link: http://bit.ly/2jPQ3Vy ). My hobbies: Skydiving, Good books, Mafia game(not Werewolf :=)), Jiu Jitsu(japanese style) and Control Line.
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About Augmented Pixels: Augmented Pixels – a leader in precise 3D geolocation and 3D maps crowdsourcing technologies
Phillip Walker
CEO, Co-Founder, Board Member of Transcend Robotics
A serial entrepreneur who values hitting milestones for investors and producing scalable results.
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About Transcend Robotics: Transcend Robotics is a startup that develops ground-based mobile robots.
Steve Hogan
Founder of Fetch Robotics
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About Fetch Robotics, Tech-Rx, Tech-Rx, Thiel Fellowship: Fetch Robotics provides the market’s only cloud-driven Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR) solution for warehousing intralogistics environments.
Ryan Tseng
Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder of Shield AI
Ryan Tseng is Shield AI’s Co-Founder and CEO. Prior to founding Shield AI, Ryan founded and led a series of other successful technology companies, including WiPower, a wireless charging company that was acquired by Qualcomm. The technologies Ryan and his WiPower team created launched the magnetic resonance wireless power industry; technology pioneered by WiPower now forms the cornerstone of the Airfuel (previously, Rezence) wireless charging standard that has been adopted by over 200 companies including market leaders Samsung, Intel, and Verizon. Ryan earned his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from University of Florida and his MBA from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
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About Shield AI: Building the world’s best AI pilot.
Brandon Tseng
Chief Operating Officer & Co-Founder of Shield AI
Brandon Tseng is Shield AI’s Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer. Prior to founding Shield AI, Brandon proudly served in the US Navy for seven years. As a Navy SEAL, he served two deployments to Afghanistan and one to the Pacific Theater. Previously, he was the Assistant Chief Engineer aboard the USS Pearl Harbor (LSD-52) and deployed to the Persian Gulf. Brandon earned his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the United States Naval Academy and his MBA from Harvard Business School.
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About Shield AI: Building the world’s best AI pilot.
Andrew Reiter
Co-Founder & Technical Fellow of Shield AI
Andrew Reiter is Shield AI’s Co-Founder and Technical Fellow. Prior to founding Shield AI, Andrew led the development and deployment of one of Draper Lab’s most successful visual-inertial guidance systems that is now widely deployed on programs of critical importance. In addition to his work on visual-inertial guidance, Andrew led both Draper’s autonomous exploring quadrotor program and 3D-mapping for dense environment reconstruction program. He also has experience developing stereo, and RGB-D SLAM systems for GPS-challenged navigation of humans, robots, cars, and UAVs. Andrew earned his Master’s in Robotics at Harvard University, and his Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University.
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About Shield AI: Building the world’s best AI pilot.
Matt Hershenson
Co-Founder and General Partner of Playground Global
Matt Hershenson, a Founding Partner at Playground Global, knew he was going to be an engineer from an early age. As a teenager, he had an after-school job at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, where his size made him ideal for running cables under the raised floors in labs and machine rooms and above the dropped ceilings in the offices. He also learned how to repair and maintain the Computer Science Department’s Xerox Altos. His earliest professional experience was at Apple, where he worked first in manufacturing engineering in Apple’s “Mac Factory” and later worked in the PowerBook group on the design of Apple’s line of PowerBook laptops. In 2000, Matt co-founded Danger, which went on to produce the first consumer smartphone. After creating nine versions of the T-Mobile Sidekick and beginning the process of going public, Danger was purchased by Microsoft. Matt stayed at Microsoft for two years after the acquisition, serving as a Partner in Hardware Engineering. Leveraging his mobile hardware experience, Matt joined Google’s Android team as Director of Hardware. At Google, Matt built the Android hardware team to span all aspects of hardware development – from chip design to regulatory compliance and everything in-between. Matt and his team shipped over 10 generations of devices across phones, tablets, and streaming receivers. In late 2014, Matt joined up with the founding team to start Playground. The idea was to invest in transformative companies with multigenerational impact, while working side-by-side with portfolio companies to help them advance faster than if they were on their own. Today, Matt is still unafraid of technological risk. His reasoning is: if you’re going to go through the trouble, you might as well create something with significance. Matt lives in the Bay Area with his wife of over 20 years and three children.
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About Danger, Playground Global: Playground is an early-stage firm investing in science companies working at the intersection of artificial intelligence and automation.
Peter Barrett
Co-Founder & General Partner of Playground Global
Peter Barrett is a founder and CTO of Playground Global. Peter believes the computing revolution—and arguably even the industrial revolution—haven’t happened yet. He is drawn to the toughest challenges at the boundaries of deep tech and hard science. Peter has been writing software since he was a teenager. At 19, his first security program caught the attention of the NSA. From his first company, Rocket Science Games, he’s had an adventurous career in technology from creating the first widely used video codec in the early 90s, building the world’s most popular IPTV platform at Microsoft, cloud intelligence for automotive at CloudCar and now quantum and optical computing, robotics and artificial intelligence at Playground. He holds over 100 patents. At Playground, Peter delights in the opportunity to deeply collaborate with entrepreneurs and help create transformative companies with multigenerational impact. He thrives on technologies that lie somewhere between improbable and impossible and companies whose success will help move civilization forward. Peter lives in Palo Alto with his wife, two children, a surly cat, and a friendly dog.
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About Playground Global: Playground is an early-stage firm investing in science companies working at the intersection of artificial intelligence and automation.
Clint Chao
Co-Founder & General Partner of Moment Ventures
Clint Chao is a founding General Partner of Moment Ventures. Moment is a Palo Alto based early stage VC firm investing in the Future of Work: startups bringing technology into and across other industries to transform the business or labor operations in areas such as logistics, food, oil & gas, education, healthcare, construction and more. Clint has invested in companies including Flowspace, Pod Foods, Swing Education, Validere, TARA AI, Netsil (acq by Nutanix), Skyward (acq by Verizon), and Payable (acq by Stripe). Prior to Moment, Clint was a co-founding Managing Director at Formative Ventures, an early-stage VC firm. During his time at Formative, Clint invested a third of the fund’s capital in early-stage technology startups, focusing on software infrastructure, web services, cloud computing applications and advanced semiconductors. Clint’s investment and board leadership experience include Mashery (acq by Intel), SOASTA (acq by Akamai), Silicon Clocks (acquired by Silicon Labs), Vungle (acq by Blackstone) and Zyray Wireless (acquired by Broadcom). Clint is an experienced technology executive who brings more than 20 years of start-up operating experience including marketing, sales and business development to Formative Ventures. Prior to co-founding Formative Ventures, Clint served as the first Vice President of Marketing, Sales and Business Development at SkyStream Networks (acquired by Tandberg TV), a leading provider of video routing solutions. Under his leadership, SkyStream became the worldwide leader in MPEG routing solutions to the broadcast, networking and enterprise markets. Prior to joining SkyStream, Clint served as Senior Director of Marketing at C-Cube Microsystems where he was responsible for marketing for the PC Division, a group he co-founded and grew to run rates exceeding $50M in sales annually. Clint began his tenure at C-Cube as the first Salesperson for the company, where he created the company’s sales representation network around the country. While there, C-Cube became the dominant supplier of digital video and imaging compression chips to the consumer electronics, computing and communications markets. Before joining C-Cube, Clint held numerous sales and sales management positions at Motorola’s Semiconductor Products Sector, where he was recognized as one of the company’s top salespeople. Clint earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley.
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About Formative Ventures, Moment Ventures, PANTASTIC: Moment Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in the future of work.
Ammar Hanafi
Co-Founder & General Partner of Moment Ventures
Ammar Hanafi joined Alloy Ventures as a general partner in 2005. At Alloy, he focuses on investments in communications and IT infrastructure, as well as internet-enabled consumer and enterprise applications and services.Operating experience:Ammar has over a decade of financial and operational management experience in the communications and technology industry. He previously served as vice president of new business ventures at Cisco Systems, where he led new product efforts in the enterprise datacenter market. From 2000 to 2002, he was vice president of corporate business development, and in that capacity, he was responsible for Cisco’s acquisitions, acquisition integration, investment, and joint venture activity on a global basis. He joined Cisco in 1997 as a member of the Corporate Business Development Group. During Ammar’s tenure at Cisco, he helped the company complete over 100 investment and M&A transactions, including 50 successful acquisitions and over $750 million in venture capital investments. Leveraging his deep industry expertise, he helped lead Cisco into a number of major new businesses, including optical networking and integrated voice and data infrastructure and applications.Prior to Cisco, Ammar held leadership positions at PanAmSat Corp., a global satellite services provider, and the investment banking firms of Morgan Stanley and Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette.Ammar received a BS in Applied and Engineering Physics from Cornell University (1988) and an MBA from Stanford University (1995). Current board seats:Ammar serves on the board of directors of 3Leaf Systems, YouSENDit, Retrevo, Mavenir Systems, GigaOM, Qwaq, Infineta Systems and Moxsie. He also led Alloy’s investment in Cortina Systems. Ammar also serves on the board of the Silicon Valley Education Foundation, a non-profit.
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About Alloy Ventures, Moment Ventures: Moment Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in the future of work.
Gabe Sibley
Founder & CEO of Verdant Robotics
Gabe Sibley is the Founder & CEO at Verdant Robotics, Inc.
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About University of Colorado Boulder, Verdant Robotics, Zippy.ai: Verdant Robotics manufactures robotics systems; the company’s current platform delivers transformative agricultural services.
Bill Huang
Founder & CEO of CloudMinds
Bill Huang is the Founder and CEO of CloudMinds, the world’s first intelligent cloud robot operator. Mr. Huang has been a new technology advocate for the telecom industry with near 30 years of work experience in the development of key technologies. He has in-depth experience and insightful thoughts in the areas of next generation mobile switching systems (3G/4G/5G), IP media streaming (IPTV/OTT), EPON/GPON, Multi-service mobile Softswitch, Operation Support System (OSS/BSS), Mobile Internet and mobile communication industry.
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About CloudMinds: As the First Cloud Robots services company, CloudMinds is developing an end-to-end ecosystem to support cloud connected smart machines
Michael Winn
CEO and Co-Founder of DroneDeploy
Michael Winn is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of DroneDeploy, a cloud-based drone platform that provides automated flight safety checks, workflows, real-time mapping, and data processing.
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About DroneDeploy: DroneDeploy is a cloud-based drone mapping and analytics platform to help businesses get things done.
Jono Millin
Co-Founder of DroneDeploy
Jono Millin is a founder of DroneDeploy, the cloud-based drone management platform. Jono completed his undergraduate degree in Computer Science, Information Systems and Applied Maths at Rhodes University before moving to the UK to obtain an MSc in Artificial Intelligence, and 2/3 of a PhD in Machine Learning from the University of Edinburgh. During his time in Edinburgh, Jono co-founded Zoom2Work and AdvertEyes before moving to San Francisco with DroneDeploy.
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About DroneDeploy: DroneDeploy is a cloud-based drone mapping and analytics platform to help businesses get things done.
Nicholas Pilkington
CTO, Co-Founder of DroneDeploy
Nicholas Pilkington is the founder of DroneDeploy, a platform for simple managed drone operations. Originally from Johannesburg, South Africa, he completed degrees in computer science, maths and information systems at Rhodes University. After graduating he started a Ph.D in machine learning at the University of Cambridge (Magadalene College) on a Nelson Mandela Rhodes University Scholarship. While at Cambridge Nicholas co-founded MyMoneyDog and Curious-Orange as well as the South African Bitcoin Exchange, Bitx. He currently resides in SOMA, San Francisco.
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About DroneDeploy: DroneDeploy is a cloud-based drone mapping and analytics platform to help businesses get things done.
Tianyue Yu
Chief Development Officer, Co-Founder of Quanergy Systems
Tianyue Yu co-founded Quanergy and serves as the Chief Development Officer. She has a strong technical foundation with extensive experience in high-resolution imaging, 3D laser scanning and microfabrication, high throughput sensing, nanotechnology, and advanced electronics materials. She oversees the company’s product design, architecture, engineering, and construction to ensure the successful implementation of the product roadmap. Prior to founding Quanergy, she had various roles at established technology companies as well as startups from principal scientists to leadership positions building cross-functional teams, and leading technology development and commercialization. She started her career at Affymetrix on sensor miniaturization and high-resolution imaging. She holds more than 15 patents in sensing, nanotechnology, and system design. Dr. Yu earned a Ph.D. from Cornell University with a concentration on nanomaterials and nanotechnology and a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical physics from the University of Science and Technology of China.
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About Quanergy Systems: Quanergy is a developer of solid state sensors used to offer smart sensing services for self-driving cars.
Jed Dean
Co-Founder of Zymergen
At Zymergen, Jed is responsible for building and operating the robotic workflows for genome engineering and high throughput screening. Prior to his work at Zymergen, he developed technology and automation for life sciences at Amyris and at the Stanford Genome Technology Center. He earned his bachelor’s degree in molecular biology from Purdue University and has a PhD in biochemistry from the Stanford University School of Medicine.
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About Zymergen: Zymergen is a biotechnology company that specializes in machine learning, big data, and artificial intelligence.
Zach Serber
Co-Founder of Zymergen
Zach Serber is a founder at Zymergen. He was previously the Director of Biology at Amyris and the Principal Investigator on a DARPA contract to develop advanced tools for synthetic biology. Dr. Serber has 15 peer-reviewed publications, 5 filed patents, and worked as a research fellow at Stanford University Medical School. He has a PhD in Biophysics from UCSF, an MSc in Neuroscience from the University of Edinburgh, and a BA from Columbia University. He lives on a sailboat in Sausalito with his wife and daughter.
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About Zymergen: Zymergen is a biotechnology company that specializes in machine learning, big data, and artificial intelligence.
Stefan Seltz-Axmacher
Founder & CEO of Starsky Robotics
Stefan Seltz-Axmacher is CEO and Founder of Starsky Robotics, a driverless truck startup launched in August 2016, which aims to make roads safer and allow truck drivers to work closer to home. Starsky Robotics began moving freight on the highway in February 2017, and in February 2018 drove a truck fully unmanned for seven miles on the highway. Starsky raised a $16.5 million Series A round led by Shasta Ventures, with substantial contributions from previous investors like Y Combinator, Trucks.vc, 50 Years, 9Point Ventures, and many others. Prior to founding Starsky Robotics, Stefan worked with a number of Silicon Valley startups, partnering with innovators in logistics and engineering fields. He holds a degree in International Business from Drexel University.
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About Starsky Robotics: Starsky Robotics is a San Francisco-based autonomous trucking company.
Robert Stefanski
Co-Founder and Managing Director of eLab Ventures
Robert Stefanski is an entrepreneur with deep operational and board experience in the software, mobile and Internet markets. He was on the founding management team of TIBCO Software, where he served as the Executive Vice President, Corporate Development, General Counsel and Secretary. As a member of TIBCO’s executive management team, Bob had broad responsibility for day to day business operations from its founding in 1997 to its emergence in the early 2000s as one of the leading enterprise infrastructure software companies in the world. TIBCO remains a world leader today in enterprise infrastructure software, with annual revenue exceeding $1 billion. Bob left TIBCO in 2008 to more actively pursue his passion as an advisor and board member for Silicon Valley early stage startups. He began his career as an attorney with Weil, Gotshal & Manges in New York City, where he represented technology, media and entertainment companies in a broad range of matters. He joined Reuters 1996 as Director of Intellectual Property. He has also been involved with the UM Center for Entrepreneurship since its inception in 2007 and currently serves on its Board of Directors as well as being a mentor at the student startup incubator, TechArb. In addition to his work with Michigan eLab, he is a partner with the international law firm Reed Smith in its Silicon Valley office. Bob is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and University of Michigan Graduate School of Engineering. He has an undergraduate degree in computer science/mathematics from Northern Michigan
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About eLab Ventures: eLab Ventures is an early stage technology venture capital fund.
Rick Bolander
Co-Founder and Managing Director of eLab Ventures
Rick Bolander is a General Partner at Michigan eLab Venture Fund. Rick has been a private investor since 1988 launching Blue Sky Ventures, a real estate investment firm, and entering the venture capital industry in 1994 at Apex Venture Partners where he was general partner. In 1999, he co-founded Gabriel Venture Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in and assists information technology startups. Rick identifies the smartest entrepreneurs and works side-by-side with them to build highly successful companies from the ground up. Rick has been involved in more than 50 venture deals, and has led over $100 million in early-stage financings and has had over $200 million in realizations. Rick has served on the boards of AccessLine Communications (acquired by Telanetix), Arula Systems (acquired by Raritan), Concord Communications (IPO – NASDAQ: CCRD), Exodus Communications (IPO – NASDAQ: EXDS, then acquired by Savvis), IPWireless (acquired by Nextwave), Jacked (acquired by Roundbox), Neopath (acquired by Cisco), NetScaler (acquired by Citrix Systems), Persistent Systems (IPO – BSE India: PER EQ), Placeware (acquired by Microsoft) Tut Systems (IPO – NASDAQ: TUTS), and Chegg (IPO – NYSE:CHGG). Education MBA – Harvard Business School MS – Electrical Engineering, University of Michigan (full fellowship) BS – Electrical Engineering, University of Michigan (with honors)
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About eLab Ventures: eLab Ventures is an early stage technology venture capital fund.
Bradley Bogolea
Co-Founder & CEO of Simbe Robotics
Bradley Bogolea, also known as Brad, is Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Simbe Robotics.
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About Simbe Robotics: Simbe Robotics builds automation solutions for shelf auditing and analytics.
Jeff Gee
Co-Founder and CDO of Simbe Robotics
Jeff Gee is the Co-Founder and Product Designer at Simbe Robotics.
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About Simbe Robotics: Simbe Robotics builds automation solutions for shelf auditing and analytics.
Mirza Shah
Co-Founder & CTO of Simbe Robotics
Mirza Shah is the Co-Founder and CTO at Simbe Robotics.
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About Simbe Robotics: Simbe Robotics builds automation solutions for shelf auditing and analytics.
Jack Wu
Co-Founder & CEO of Nightingale Security
Jack Wu joined Nightingale Security as Co-Founder & CEO in 2014.
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About Nightingale Security: Nightingale Security is a autonomous drone solution in aerial robotic security.
Jon Binney
Co-Founder & CTO of Iron Ox
Jon Binney is a Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Iron Ox.
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About Iron Ox: Iron Ox operates autonomous robotic greenhouses that grow every plant at its best from seed to harvest.
Brandon Alexander
Co-Founder & CEO of Iron Ox
Brandon Alexander is the CEO and cofounder of Iron Ox, a company building robotic greenhouses to make premium produce accessible to everyone. Inspired by his family farm and his career in robotics, Brandon sought to find a sustainable approach to feeding the world’s growing population in an industry that’s challenged with a declining labor force and extreme weather conditions. With his cofounder Jon Binney, he traveled all across California to talk with local farmers about the challenges facing the industry and how robotics can provide modern solutions. Brandon has a track record of laying the groundwork for successful robotic deployment. He previously played a key role in Google[x]’s drone delivery program, Project Wing, where he developed the flight mission control software. He has also worked at the robotics think tank Willow Garage.
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About Iron Ox: Iron Ox operates autonomous robotic greenhouses that grow every plant at its best from seed to harvest.
Paz Eshel
Co-Founder & COO of Kodiak Robotics
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About Kodiak Robotics: Kodiak Robotics develops autonomous technology for long-haul trucking.
Don Burnette
Co-Founder & CEO of Kodiak Robotics
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About Kodiak Robotics: Kodiak Robotics develops autonomous technology for long-haul trucking.
Hugo de Gentile
Co-Founder & CEO of Willo
Hugo de Gentile is the Co-Founder and CEO at Willo
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About Willo: Willo develops technology in oral health that automatically empowers everyone to achieve the best at-home clean possible.
Paul Mikesell
Founder / CEO of Carbon Robotics
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About Carbon Robotics: Carbon Robotics develops robots for agriculture-related applications.
Victor Darolfi
Founder & CEO of RoboTire
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About RoboTire: RoboTire automates vehicle maintenance by combining robots and computer vision.
Andrew Liang
Co-Founder of Built Robotics
Co-Founder at Built Robotics.
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About Built Robotics: Built Robotics transforms heavy equipment into autonomous robots for the $1 trillion earthmoving industry.
Noah Ready-Campbell
Founder, CEO & Engineer of Built Robotics
Noah is the founder and CEO of Built Robotics, a company building automated guidance systems for heavy equipment. He founded the company in 2016, and has raised over $48 million from leading Silicon Valley investors including Founders Fund, NEA and Next47. Previously, Noah founded an ecommerce startup called Twice, which raised $23 million from Andreessen Horowitz before eBay acquired it in 2015. Noah began his career at Google, and he studied business and engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, but his first job was working as a carpenter’s helper for his dad, helping to renovate old houses in rural New England.
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About Built Robotics: Built Robotics transforms heavy equipment into autonomous robots for the $1 trillion earthmoving industry.
Kim Abrams
CEO & Co-Founder of Petra
Kim Abrams is the CEO and Co-Founder at Petra.
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About Petra: Petra is a Robotics company that focuses solely on underground utilities.
Shivani Torres
Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer of Petra
Shivani is a human torch, igniting passion in those around her. She draws on her years at Stanford’s PRL and as a co-founder to help entrepreneurs shift their perspective, sense subtle customer sentiment, and recognize untapped potential.
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About Petra: Petra is a Robotics company that focuses solely on underground utilities.
Brian Gerkey
Chief Executive Officer, Founder of Open Robotics
Brian Gerkey is CEO of Open Robotics. Prior to joining Open Robotics, Brian was Director of Open Source Development at Willow Garage. Previously, Brian was a Computer Scientist in the Artificial Intelligence Center at SRI, and before that, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Artificial Intelligence Lab at Stanford University. Brian received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Southern California (USC) in 2003, his M.S. in Computer Science from USC in 2000, and his B.S.E. in Computer Engineering, with a secondary major in Mathematics and a minor in Robotics and Automation, from Tulane University in 1998. Among other accolades, Brian was recognized by MIT Technology Review with the TR35 award and by Silicon Valley Business Journal with their 40 Under 40 award.
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About Open Robotics: Open Robotics support the development, distribution, and adoption of open software and hardware for use in robotics.
Luis Dussan
Founder, CTO and President of AEye
Luis Dussan is a co-founder and CEO of AEye.
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About AEye: AEye develops AI-powered LiDAR systems for vehicle autonomy, advanced driver assistance systems, and robotic vision applications.
Eric Manlunas
Managing Partner and Founder (US & SE Asia) of Wavemaker Partners
Eric is a co-Founder and Managing Partner with Wavemaker Partners, a cross border early-stage venture capital firm headquartered in Los Angeles and Singapore. He is a two-time start-up entrepreneur turned venture capitalist with a strong passion for early-stage investing. Eric co-founded Wavemaker following its merger with Frontera Group, a prior early-stage boutique venture capital firm he founded in 2003. Eric has a proven track record as an early investor in over 230 early-stage ventures, of which half remain active and growing. Those companies have collectively received over $1B in growth capital. Eric also served in a concurrent capacity as a Partner of a Los Angeles-based value hedge fund from late-2002 until its sale to a San Francisco-based commercial bank in mid-2006. Prior to Frontera, Eric founded Sitestar in mid-1999. Sitestar is an Internet service provider in the rural markets of the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Upon helping steer Sitestar in becoming one of the largest independent ISPs in the region, Eric successfully divested his remaining ownership stake in December 2002. Prior to that, Eric’s first startup was Interfoods, an online specialty foods venture he founded in early 1997. Within 3 years, Interfoods grew to become a mid-sized specialty foods provider in its market and was successfully acquired in late 1999. Eric began his career as a consulting associate with Arthur Andersen’s retail management consulting division from 1991-1995. He earned a B.S. in Communications from Florida International University and an M.B.A from Pepperdine University. Eric is currently a member of the board of a number of emerging companies. He is also a Trustee of the Philippine Development Foundation, an organization committed to social development initiatives in the Philippines, Eric’s country of origin.
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About Wavemaker 360, Wavemaker Partners: Wavemaker is a crossborder early-stage VC firm that focuses on early-stage tech startup opportunities.
Felipe Chávez Cortés
CEO & Co-Founder of Kiwibot
CEO Kiwibot.com.
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About Kiwibot: Kiwibot offers food delivery with robots for campus colleges.
Sergio Pachón
Co-Founder of Kiwibot
Co-Founder at Kiwi Campus.
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About Kiwibot: Kiwibot offers food delivery with robots for campus colleges.
Kelsey Mellard
CEO & Co-Founder of Sitka
Kelsey Mellard is the CEO and Founder of Sitka, a first-of-its-kind medical vConsults platform and specialty provider network. She launched Sitka in 2018 to help improve access to and delivery of specialty care across the nation. Prior to founding Sitka, Kelsey led Health System Integration at Honor, a comprehensive technology-backed home care company. Before joining the Honor, Kelsey led the development of the Post-Acute Care Center for Research (PACCR), which she served as its Executive Director. Kelsey also served in VP roles at naviHealth, UnitedHealth Group, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), and held positions at Advisory Board Company, Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics, and Kaiser Family Foundation. Kelsey holds a Bachelor’s of Science Degree in Community Health from Winona State University and a Master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of Kansas. She also currently serves as an adjunct faculty member at Winona State University in the College of Nursing and Health Services.
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About Sitka, Winona State University: Sitka is a customizable video software platform that connects primary care providers to the virtual specialty provider network.
Tyler Shultz
Co-Founder & CEO of Flux Bioscience
Tyler Shultz is an entrepreneur fostering innovation in healthcare.
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About Ethics in Entrepreneurship, Flux Bioscience: Flux Biosciences is a company spun out of Stanford University, where the technology used to read and write computer hard drives .
Shan X Wang
Co-Founder of Flux Bioscience
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About Flux Bioscience: Flux Biosciences is a company spun out of Stanford University, where the technology used to read and write computer hard drives .
Jordi Munoz
Founder of 3D Robotics
Jordi Munoz Co-Founded 3D Robotics Inc. in 2009 and serves as its Chief Technology Officer.Jordi Munoz serves as Director of 3DRx Labs at 3D Robotics Inc. He studied briefly at Ensenada’s Center for Technical and Higher Education.
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About 3D Robotics, mRobotics.io: 3DR makes advanced drone technology easily accessible to the construction, mining, and surveying industries for use in data analysis.
Ankit Jain
Founder & CEO of Infinitus Systems
Ankit is a serial entrepreneur and Founder & CEO of Infinitus Systems, Inc. Most recently, Ankit was a Founding Partner at Gradient Ventures and a Director of Engineering at Google. Previously, he was the Vice President of Product at SimilarWeb, which he joined via the acquisition of mobile intelligence startup Quettra that he founded and led as CEO. Prior to Quettra, Ankit was the Head of Search, Discovery and Infrastructure for Google Play, which he joined through the acquisition of Cuil. At Cuil, he helped build several parts of web, real time and social search engines from scratch. Ankit has co-authored the leading chapter in the book Next Generation Search Engines: Advanced Models for Information Retrieval as well as one of the most defining blog posts about mobile app retention. Ankit received his BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley (Cal) and his MS in Computer Science with a focus on Parallel and Distributed Computing also from Cal. He received a Certificate in Management of Technology from the Walter A. Haas School of Business at Cal.
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About Infinitus Systems: Infinitus is a startup company that develops voice robotic process automation tools for the health care industry.
Greg Castle
Managing Partner, Founder & CEO of Anorak Ventures
Greg is the Managing Partner of Anorak Ventures, a seed-stage venture capital firm focused on emerging technology. Based in Silicon Valley, the firm focuses on VR/AR, robotics, autonomous vehicles, blockchain, deep learning and artificial intelligence. Portfolio companies include Against Gravity, Catalog, Lightform and 6d.ai. Prior to Anorak, Greg was an active angel investor with 26 investments counting Flexport and two exits including Oculus, which was acquired by Facebook for $2bln. With strong ties to the VR/AR community, Greg focuses much of his time investing in, and mentoring startups in this sector. Previously, Greg led marketing for the popular game development company Scaleform (acq. 2011) and for Autodesk’s Game Technology Group.
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About Anorak Ventures: Investing at the earliest stages in transformational people and technology
Keenan Wyrobek
Founder, Head of Product & Engineering of Zipline
Keenan Wyrobek is co-founder and head of product and engineering at Zipline, the world’s first drone delivery service whose focus is delivering life-saving medicine to the most difficult to reach places on earth. Zipline has been contracted by the Government of Rwanda to deliver blood to transfusion clinics across the country. The company plans to expand its medical delivery service to countries across Africa and Latin America over the course of 2017. In addition, Zipline recently announced plans to bring its life-saving technology to help underserved Native American populations the United States. Prior to Zipline, Keenan was a co-founder and director of the Personal Robotics Program at Willow Garage. He was involved in launching and growing the Robot Operating System (ROS) and shipping PR2, the first personal robot for software R&D. Keenan has spent years delivering high tech products to market across a range of fields including consumer electronics, sportswear, and medical robotics. He is passionate about creating magical customer experiences and hiring world-class teams.
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About Zipline: Zipline designs, manufactures, and operates drones to deliver vital medical products to everyone, no matter where they live.
Keller Rinaudo
Co-Founder and CEO of Zipline
Keller Rinaudo is CEO and co-founder of Zipline, the world’s first drone delivery service whose focus is delivering life saving medicine even to the most difficult to reach places on earth. Prior to Zipline, he was a software engineer and a professional rock climber. A graduate of Harvard University, he built computers out of RNA and DNA that can operate in human cells as molecular doctors. Mr. Rinaudo published this research in Nature Biotechnology, becoming one of the youngest first authors in the publication’s history.
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About Zipline: Zipline designs, manufactures, and operates drones to deliver vital medical products to everyone, no matter where they live.
Andreas Raptopoulos
Co-Founder and CEO of Matternet
Founded Matternet and serves as Chief Executive Officer since 2011. Pioneering on-demand drone logistics networks for medical items and commercial goods. Motivated by the desire to solve one of humanity’s grand challenges, equal access to goods, by leapfrogging road infrastructure. Holds an BS & MS in Aeronautical Engineering, is a Royal College of Art graduate in Design and is lead inventor in several US and international patents. Speaker, Google Solve for X, 2012 & TED Global, 2013. Tech Pioneer, World Economic Forum, 2015.
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About Matternet: Matternet makes access to goods as frictionless and universal as access to information.
Derrick Xiong
Co-Founder & CMO of Ehang
Yifang (Derrick) Xiong is the Co-Founder of EHang, Inc.Prior to this, he Co-founded theRocketSpace Inc. He worked as Chairman of Student Council at Nanyang Technological University. Before that, he was the Analyst at Credit Suisse.
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About Ehang: Ehang is a technology enterprise focused on R&D and production in airplane and aircraft field.
Naganand Murty
Founder & CEO of Electric Sheep Robotics
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About Electric Sheep Robotics: Electric Sheep Robotics provides robotics and machinery solutions to industries needing mechanized solutions.
Rosanna Myers
Co-Founder of Carbon Robotics
Rosanna is the Co-Founder of Carbon Robotics.
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About Carbon Robotics: Carbon Robotics makes advanced robotics dramatically more accessible to help solve some of society’s most intractable problems.
Thomas Palomares
Co-Founder and CTO of FarmWise
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About FarmWise: Feeding our World, and our Future.
Eric Sanchez
Co-Founder, CEO of Revl
Eric Sanchez is a Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Revl.
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About Revl: AI Powered Video Souvenirs as a Service. Full end to end solution for roller coasters, skydive drop zones, race tracks, and zip lines.
Bruce Pla
Co-Founder & Chief Design Officer of Revl
Bruce Pla is a Co-Founder and Chief Design Officer at Revl.
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About Revl: AI Powered Video Souvenirs as a Service. Full end to end solution for roller coasters, skydive drop zones, race tracks, and zip lines.
Nelson Vazquez
Co-Founder & CTO of Revl
Nelson Vazquez is a Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Revl.
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About Revl: AI Powered Video Souvenirs as a Service. Full end to end solution for roller coasters, skydive drop zones, race tracks, and zip lines.
Tyler Hayes
Co-Founder and CEO of Atom Limbs
Tyler Hayes is the Co-Founder and CEO at Atom Limbs.
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About Atom Limbs: Atom builds mind-controlled artificial limbs, to enable a better human body.
Eric Monsef
Co-Founder and CEO of Atom Limbs
Eric Monsef is the Co-founder and CTO at Atom Limbs.
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About Atom Limbs: Atom builds mind-controlled artificial limbs, to enable a better human body.
Maxwell Reynolds
Co-Founder & CEO of Symbio Robotics
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About Symbio Robotics: Symbio Robotics is developing robotic systems and software for advanced manufacturing.
Ali Ahmed
Founder & CEO of Robomart
Serial entrepreneur voted one of the ‘Top 100 Asian Stars in UK Tech’ by KPMG and endorsed by TechCity UK and the UK Government as an exceptional talent in technology, with over a decade of experience in on-demand delivery, communications and retail tech. Previously founded on-demand delivery startup Dispatch, and Lutebox, and worked at Groupon, Unilever, GSK.
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About GlaxoSmithKline, Groupon, Robomart, RSM International: On-Demand Mobile Stores
Ralf Schoenherr
Co-Founder of Neatleaf
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About Neatleaf: Data-driven & autonomous agriculture for yield optimization.
Elmar Mair
Co-Founder of Neatleaf
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About Neatleaf: Data-driven & autonomous agriculture for yield optimization.
Youssri Helmy
Founder, CEO of Eonite Perception
Youssri brings over 25 years of experience in engineering, product management, marketing, and business development in a wide range of technologies to Eonite. He is a serial entrepreneur who has successfully cofounded, operated and exited several startups globally.
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About Eonite Perception, Si-Ware Systems: Eonite Perception is a 3D mapping and tracking company on a mission to enable machines to understand the real world.
Mengqiu Wang
Founder & CEO of Zero Zero Robotics
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About Zero Zero Robotics: Zero Zero Robotics is working to develop an innovative new device called the Hover Camera.
Shai Magzimof
Founder & CEO of Phantom Auto
Before Phantom Auto, Shai founded his first company at age 17 while participating in Y-combinator. That company later became Cue and was acquired by Apple. At age 20, Shai founded Nextpeer, a real-time multiplayer mobile gaming social platform, which had over 180 million downloads before it was acquired by Viber. Shai served as an executive at Viber for a year. In late 2017 Shai started Phantom Auto from his garage in Palo Alto.
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About Phantom Auto: Phantom Auto is a software company that offers teleoperation safety solutions and remote operations for logistics vehicles.
Elliot Katz
Co-Founder / Chief Business Development Officer of Phantom Auto
As chair of the autonomous vehicle practices at two of the largest law firms in the world, Elliot advised automakers, global tech companies, ridesharing companies, and municipalities on business, legal, policy, and regulatory issues pertaining to these types of vehicles. An advocate who recognizes the important societal benefit of automated vehicles, Elliot regularly speaks at automated vehicle events across the country and throughout the world, and has recently discussed his views with media outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CBS Nightly News, CNBC, Wired, Forbes, Bloomberg, and NPR. The following is an interview Elliot recently did with Forbes regarding automated vehicles: “Autonomous Vehicles: ‘Zero Human Intervention Is Still Several Years Away”.
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About DLA Piper, McGuireWoods, Phantom Auto: Phantom Auto is a software company that offers teleoperation safety solutions and remote operations for logistics vehicles.
Brad Squicciarini
Founder and CTO of Coco
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About Coco: A last-mile delivery service that deploys human-operated sidewalk robots to transport goods from merchants to their customers
Zach Rash
Founder of Coco
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About Coco: A last-mile delivery service that deploys human-operated sidewalk robots to transport goods from merchants to their customers
Chaitan S. Khosla
Founder of Sitari Pharmaceuticals
Dr. Chaitan Khosla is a Professor of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and by courtesy, Biochemistry at Stanford University. His research is focused on two premises, understanding the mechanistic logic line of polyketide synthases for the purpose of engineering novel antibiotics, and the second is focused on the biochemistry of celiac disease particularly involving tissue transglutaminase 2. Dr. Khosla received his B. Tech in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology and his PhD degree at the California Institute of Technology with Professor Jay Bailey studying the expression of the Vitreoscilla Hemoglobin gene. He then went on to finish his postdoctoral work at the John Innes Centre with Prof. David Hopwood. Prof. Khosla has spent his entire academic career at Stanford University. Dr. Khosla has been the recipient for numerous awards including the Alan T. Waterman Award, the Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry, the ACS Pure Chemistry Award, and more recently, the James E. Bailey Award. He is an honored member of the National Academy of Engineering and the recipient of a Distinguished Alumni Award from the California Institute of Technology.
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About Alvine Pharmaceuticals, Sitari Pharmaceuticals, Stanford University: Sitari Pharmaceuticals is a biotechnology company developing treatments for multiple disease indications.
Christian Sanz
CEO and Founder of Skycatch
Christian Sanz is the CEO and founder of Skycatch and has over 20 years of experience in software, hardware, and technical leadership.
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About Skycatch: Skycatch builds technology to autonomously capture, process, and analyze 3D drone data.
Parker Clark
CTO & Co-Founder of Kespry
Parker Clark is the CTO and founder of Kespry.
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About Kespry: Kespry provides an aerial intelligence platform that transforms how organizations capture, analyze, and share insights about their business.
Igino Cafiero
Founder, CEO of Bear Flag Robotics
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About Bear Flag Robotics: Bear Flag Robotics is an AgTech company developing autonomous technology for farm tractors to increase productivity and improve safety.
Aubrey Donnellan
Founder of Bear Flag Robotics
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About Bear Flag Robotics: Bear Flag Robotics is an AgTech company developing autonomous technology for farm tractors to increase productivity and improve safety.
Chris Gerdes
Founder and Principal Scientist of Peloton Technology
Chris is a world-renowned expert in vehicle dynamics and safety, and the director of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford, which counts as its members key transportation industry players. Prior to joining Stanford, Professor Gerdes was the project leader for vehicle dynamics for Freightliner trucks. At Stanford, Chris has developed several pioneering automated vehicles, including the autonomous racecar Audi TTS, which famously climbed Pikes Peak. Chris’s work blends the rigor of safety critical systems, with the need to work well with the human driver. Chris holds an BSME from UPenn, and a PhD from UC Berkeley.
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About Peloton Technology, Stanford University: Peloton is a connected and automated vehicle technology company improving safety and efficiency in the trucking industry.
Kevin Primat
Founder & CEO of Primed Technologies
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About Primed Technologies: Primed is redefining Conversational AI with the development of a fuzzy, friendly and talkative toy for children.
Will Patrick
Co-Founder & CEO of Culture Biosciences
Will Patrick is a co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at Culture Robotics.
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About Culture Biosciences: Culture Biosciences develops automated bio-reactors that help companies optimize their manufacturing processes.
Achille Verheye
Co-Founder and Robotics Engineer of Peanut Robotics
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About Peanut Robotics: Peanut Robotics offers a robot that cleans commercial spaces such as restaurants, hotels, airports, and offices.
