Where the best AI founders start their next company.

Nick Desai

Queue

MS EE UCLA. 6x VC-funded founder/CEO (Together, Heal). Gen-AI and ML obsessed. Speaker and author. 3 exits.

$300M raised (Breyer Capital, Fidelity, Spark Capital, Humana, Slow Ventures)

Sharmin Ali

Adomo AI

4x entrepreneur with 3 exits. Bestselling author of 3 books, global keynote speaker on innovation and AI. Created 10K+ jobs.

$200M+ raised collectively (a16z, GEM VC). 3 exits.

Andy Chou

Ventrilo.ai

BS EECS Berkeley, Stanford CS PhD. Founded Coverity in '03, grew to $75M ARR. Acquired by Synopsys.

Angel investor in 20+ companies (Loom, LaunchDarkly)

Yuka Kojima

Ememe

MIT MBA, ex-PlayStation. 3x founder: Ememe (text-to-motion), FOVE (eye-tracking VR), and Cradle (DEI SaaS). Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia; Nikkei Woman of the Year.

$26M raised (Foxconn, Samsung, Nikon)

Juan Lozano

Mariana Minerals

Stanford Physics & CS (AI). Co-founded InsideMaps, led ML at Kite (acquired by Affirm).

$400M raised (Khosla Ventures, a16z, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Greenoaks)

Monisha Perkash

Mojo Ventures

Yale Psychobiology. Stanford MBA & MA Education. 2x co-founder/CEO (Lumo Bodytech, TuitionCoach). Ex-Meta Director of Product for smart glasses and music/creators. Stanford entrepreneurship lecturer.

$26M raised (Eric Schmidt/Innovation Endeavors, Jerry Yang/AME Cloud Ventures, Madrona). 2 exits.

Michael Borohovski

Kobo Foundry

MIT CS '09. Founder & CTO of Tinfoil Security (acquired by Synopsys). Years of offensive software security for the intelligence community; also Morgan Stanley, Mandiant, and Apple. 8 patents.

$1.5M raised (Naval Ravikant, Ridge Ventures, Morado Ventures). 1 exit.

Kelly Peng

First Intelligence

UC Berkeley EECS, Stanford Nanofab. 2x founder. Previously founded Kura (taped out world's fastest smart display driver at TSMC). Forbes 30 Under 30.

$17M+ raised (TSMC, SAIC Motors, Access Industries). 2x CES Awards.

Josh Payne

Coframe

Stanford Engineering + MBA. 20+ patents in AI, quantum computing, infosec. Co-founded Autograph with Tom Brady ($2B+ unicorn, a16z). AccessBell acquired by Tata Group.

$9M raised (Khosla Ventures, NFDG)

Asmau Ahmed

Rinnce

Chemical engineering at UVA, MBA at Columbia. Founded Plum Perfect, a visual AI company she scaled from a solo project to millions of users globally. Led moonshot teams at GoogleX. Now Chief AI & Data Officer at Varo Bank while building Rinnce, a Responsible Innovation Center for the age of AI.

1 exit

CK Chang Kim

Saywise

3x founder. Michigan Physics. Ex-Google PM. Co-founded TNC (acquired by Google). Founded Tapas Media (acquired by Kakao, $510M).

Tapas acquired by Kakao for $510M

Jason Zhang

Fairway

Co-founder of HomeLight (~$2B valuation, $200M ARR). Led marketplace growth at StubHub and Upwork Innovation Labs. Now building an AI rental concierge that takes renters from search to signing.

$250M raised (Google Ventures, Innovation Endeavors). 1 exit.

Rafael Cosman

Protogon Research

Stanford CS. Ex-Google Brain & Palantir. Founded Archblock and grew it 0 → 70+ people and 7-figure ARR. Co-founded StreetCode Academy.

$41.5M raised. 1 exit.

Adam Cohen Hillel

Interfaces

Built one of Israel's largest mobile games companies as a teenager (1.5M downloads). First founding member of IDF Cyber Unit 81. Cado Security (acquired by Darktrace). Early team at Omi; co-created suna.so, the largest open-source Manus competitor.

1 exit

Nate Becker

Sela

Yale '09, LinkedIn data science alum. Previously founded VoiceOps (YC), signed Square and Sunrun as customers.

$17.3M raised (Accel, Founders Fund, Bain Capital Ventures)

Leigh Purnell

Subatomic Energy

Founder & CEO of Petalite. 11 years in battery charging, asset finance, and smart energy networks. 25+ patents in battery management and power electronics.

$51M raised (TPG). 1 exit.

Jeff Anderson

Subatomic Energy

4x founder, 12 years as a venture-backed operator. Founder & CEO of Full Cycle Bioplastics ($30M raised). Built and run teams of 80+.

$35M raised. 1 exit.

Vadim Axelrod

Cara AI

Pomona '91, Stanford '93. CTO/product focus across 10+ startups in healthtech, security, networking, and edtech (Lark Health, Rentals.com, Entrust).

$30M raised (Sequoia, SoftBank). 2 exits.

Brian Bentow

SlashGuard

Harvey Mudd '05. Multi-exited technical founder who builds capital-efficient companies fast — 3 exits from companies he founded.

$11M raised (Aquiline Capital, Equal Ventures, Chapter One). 3 exits, $500M in business value.

Deyan Vitanov

Jest

Stanford MBA. 4x founder (3 acquired, 1 bootstrapped & profitable). CMO at gaming unicorn Playco.

4 exits

Jay Park

iQ Surgical

MD from the University of Edinburgh; postdoctoral scholar in Stanford Neurosurgery. Co-founded Stanford's Surgical Innovation & Machine Interfacing (SIMI) Lab.

$1.5M raised

Sahin Boydas

Lovie

5x founder. 2 exits (RemoteTeam → Gusto, MovieLaLa → Snap). Angel investor in 180 startups.

$10M raised (Marc Benioff, SoftBank)

Taranjeet Singh

mem0

Built an AI tutor featured at Google I/O and in the first GPT Store. Co-founded mem0 (formerly Embedchain), the memory layer for AI agents. 64K+ GitHub stars.

$24M raised across Seed and Series A (YC, Inception)

Vincent Alessi

Augmentiv

Deep-tech entrepreneur in life science and advanced materials. Michigan, Harvard, Rockefeller University, DoD. Built a $1.8B Bio × AI program for Flagship. 18 patents.

$25M raised (Mercury, Telegraph Hill Partners). 2 exits.

Jeremy Nixon

Infinity

Founder & CEO of Infinity (AI infrastructure optimization). Founder of AGI House and AGI Foundation (75+ AI hackathons and technical events). Partner at Principal Venture Partners.

$850K raised

Alex Beatson

Axiom Bio

Princeton PhD in deep learning & generative models. Director of ML at Redesign Science (small-molecule drug discovery). AI toxicity testing.

$40M Series A

Skyler Erickson

Gondola

Builder across hardware, AI/ML, biotech, and consumer products. Co-founded Otari, acquired by Peloton.

$3M raised. 1 exit.

Ben Turtel

Lightning Rod Labs

Ex-Google engineer and Area120 CTO. Co-founded Lightning Rod Labs to train AI that predicts the future from unstructured data — self-play on real-world outcomes, no curated labels.

$4M raised (Rich Miner, Hilary Kivitz, Tim Lee). $700K+ revenue; DoD Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace status. 1 exit.

Mike Pollack

Brixo

5x founder across product, GTM, and marketing leadership.

$11M raised (Bloomberg Beta, Susa Ventures). 2 exits.

Ed Albanese

ThirdLaw

UVA BA, Wharton MBA. Founded Krypton in 2014. Employee #1 at Vectara, first business hire at Cloudera, led IoT at Splunk. Also VMware and MongoDB pre-$5M.

$4.5M raised (True Ventures, Costanoa Ventures). 1 exit.

Tyler Chen

Subtle Computing

Berkeley undergrad, Stanford PhD dropout. Single-cell RNA-seq and microfluidics at Illumina, vehicle engineering at Hyperloop, neural interfaces at Stanford. AI agents for government.

$6M raised (Abstract Ventures, Steve Blank). YC X25.

Anand Atreya

Princeton BSE '07, Stanford MS '11. AI, robotics, and self-driving cars. 2x founder: WiFiSLAM (sold to Apple) and Savvy (sold to Google). Led personal finance product teams at Google.

2 exits (WiFiSLAM → Apple, Savvy → Google)

Andrew Radin

BS/MS CS, Stanford BMI. 5x entrepreneur, CTO then CEO. Built products used by millions in telephony, gaming, and ad tech. Founded Aria Pharmaceuticals. Top 100 AI Leader in Pharma.

Raised from a16z, SoftBank, and others

Erik Juhl

Protobloc

Exited founder building a user-curated data and attestation layer that rewards people for their own participation. Founding team out of Beamery and Kabam.

$650K raised. 1 exit.

Elad Ferber

Synthpop

Stanford & Technion grad. Talpiot (elite IDF unit). 10+ years building AI × healthcare. Founded Spry Health (acquired by ZOLL Itamar). Led engineering for SpaceIL (lunar lander).

$23M raised

Jan Jannink

Synthpop

Stanford CS PhD (Database Group, 2001). Co-founder or founding member of 5 AI & analytics startups, 2 still ongoing, 1 exit. Occasional Stanford CS 193S instructor.

$23M raised

Kazuki Nakayashiki

Glasp

ME Chem & Bio at UTokyo, Business at UC Berkeley. Founded Glasp, a platform for annotating the web with AI. Alum of On Deck, Launch House, Berkeley SkyDeck.

Nick Desai

Queue

MS EE UCLA. 6x VC-funded founder/CEO (Together, Heal). Gen-AI and ML obsessed. Speaker and author. 3 exits.

$300M raised (Breyer Capital, Fidelity, Spark Capital, Humana, Slow Ventures)

Sharmin Ali

Adomo AI

4x entrepreneur with 3 exits. Bestselling author of 3 books, global keynote speaker on innovation and AI. Created 10K+ jobs.

$200M+ raised collectively (a16z, GEM VC). 3 exits.

Andy Chou

Ventrilo.ai

BS EECS Berkeley, Stanford CS PhD. Founded Coverity in '03, grew to $75M ARR. Acquired by Synopsys.

Angel investor in 20+ companies (Loom, LaunchDarkly)

Yuka Kojima

Ememe

MIT MBA, ex-PlayStation. 3x founder: Ememe (text-to-motion), FOVE (eye-tracking VR), and Cradle (DEI SaaS). Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia; Nikkei Woman of the Year.

$26M raised (Foxconn, Samsung, Nikon)

Juan Lozano

Mariana Minerals

Stanford Physics & CS (AI). Co-founded InsideMaps, led ML at Kite (acquired by Affirm).

$400M raised (Khosla Ventures, a16z, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Greenoaks)

Monisha Perkash

Mojo Ventures

Yale Psychobiology. Stanford MBA & MA Education. 2x co-founder/CEO (Lumo Bodytech, TuitionCoach). Ex-Meta Director of Product for smart glasses and music/creators. Stanford entrepreneurship lecturer.

$26M raised (Eric Schmidt/Innovation Endeavors, Jerry Yang/AME Cloud Ventures, Madrona). 2 exits.

Michael Borohovski

Kobo Foundry

MIT CS '09. Founder & CTO of Tinfoil Security (acquired by Synopsys). Years of offensive software security for the intelligence community; also Morgan Stanley, Mandiant, and Apple. 8 patents.

$1.5M raised (Naval Ravikant, Ridge Ventures, Morado Ventures). 1 exit.

Kelly Peng

First Intelligence

UC Berkeley EECS, Stanford Nanofab. 2x founder. Previously founded Kura (taped out world's fastest smart display driver at TSMC). Forbes 30 Under 30.

$17M+ raised (TSMC, SAIC Motors, Access Industries). 2x CES Awards.

Josh Payne

Coframe

Stanford Engineering + MBA. 20+ patents in AI, quantum computing, infosec. Co-founded Autograph with Tom Brady ($2B+ unicorn, a16z). AccessBell acquired by Tata Group.

$9M raised (Khosla Ventures, NFDG)

Asmau Ahmed

Rinnce

Chemical engineering at UVA, MBA at Columbia. Founded Plum Perfect, a visual AI company she scaled from a solo project to millions of users globally. Led moonshot teams at GoogleX. Now Chief AI & Data Officer at Varo Bank while building Rinnce, a Responsible Innovation Center for the age of AI.

1 exit

CK Chang Kim

Saywise

3x founder. Michigan Physics. Ex-Google PM. Co-founded TNC (acquired by Google). Founded Tapas Media (acquired by Kakao, $510M).

Tapas acquired by Kakao for $510M

Jason Zhang

Fairway

Co-founder of HomeLight (~$2B valuation, $200M ARR). Led marketplace growth at StubHub and Upwork Innovation Labs. Now building an AI rental concierge that takes renters from search to signing.

$250M raised (Google Ventures, Innovation Endeavors). 1 exit.

Rafael Cosman

Protogon Research

Stanford CS. Ex-Google Brain & Palantir. Founded Archblock and grew it 0 → 70+ people and 7-figure ARR. Co-founded StreetCode Academy.

$41.5M raised. 1 exit.

Adam Cohen Hillel

Interfaces

Built one of Israel's largest mobile games companies as a teenager (1.5M downloads). First founding member of IDF Cyber Unit 81. Cado Security (acquired by Darktrace). Early team at Omi; co-created suna.so, the largest open-source Manus competitor.

1 exit

Nate Becker

Sela

Yale '09, LinkedIn data science alum. Previously founded VoiceOps (YC), signed Square and Sunrun as customers.

$17.3M raised (Accel, Founders Fund, Bain Capital Ventures)

Leigh Purnell

Subatomic Energy

Founder & CEO of Petalite. 11 years in battery charging, asset finance, and smart energy networks. 25+ patents in battery management and power electronics.

$51M raised (TPG). 1 exit.

Jeff Anderson

Subatomic Energy

4x founder, 12 years as a venture-backed operator. Founder & CEO of Full Cycle Bioplastics ($30M raised). Built and run teams of 80+.

$35M raised. 1 exit.

Vadim Axelrod

Cara AI

Pomona '91, Stanford '93. CTO/product focus across 10+ startups in healthtech, security, networking, and edtech (Lark Health, Rentals.com, Entrust).

$30M raised (Sequoia, SoftBank). 2 exits.

Brian Bentow

SlashGuard

Harvey Mudd '05. Multi-exited technical founder who builds capital-efficient companies fast — 3 exits from companies he founded.

$11M raised (Aquiline Capital, Equal Ventures, Chapter One). 3 exits, $500M in business value.

Deyan Vitanov

Jest

Stanford MBA. 4x founder (3 acquired, 1 bootstrapped & profitable). CMO at gaming unicorn Playco.

4 exits

Jay Park

iQ Surgical

MD from the University of Edinburgh; postdoctoral scholar in Stanford Neurosurgery. Co-founded Stanford's Surgical Innovation & Machine Interfacing (SIMI) Lab.

$1.5M raised

Sahin Boydas

Lovie

5x founder. 2 exits (RemoteTeam → Gusto, MovieLaLa → Snap). Angel investor in 180 startups.

$10M raised (Marc Benioff, SoftBank)

Taranjeet Singh

mem0

Built an AI tutor featured at Google I/O and in the first GPT Store. Co-founded mem0 (formerly Embedchain), the memory layer for AI agents. 64K+ GitHub stars.

$24M raised across Seed and Series A (YC, Inception)

Vincent Alessi

Augmentiv

Deep-tech entrepreneur in life science and advanced materials. Michigan, Harvard, Rockefeller University, DoD. Built a $1.8B Bio × AI program for Flagship. 18 patents.

$25M raised (Mercury, Telegraph Hill Partners). 2 exits.

Jeremy Nixon

Infinity

Founder & CEO of Infinity (AI infrastructure optimization). Founder of AGI House and AGI Foundation (75+ AI hackathons and technical events). Partner at Principal Venture Partners.

$850K raised

Alex Beatson

Axiom Bio

Princeton PhD in deep learning & generative models. Director of ML at Redesign Science (small-molecule drug discovery). AI toxicity testing.

$40M Series A

Skyler Erickson

Gondola

Builder across hardware, AI/ML, biotech, and consumer products. Co-founded Otari, acquired by Peloton.

$3M raised. 1 exit.

Ben Turtel

Lightning Rod Labs

Ex-Google engineer and Area120 CTO. Co-founded Lightning Rod Labs to train AI that predicts the future from unstructured data — self-play on real-world outcomes, no curated labels.

$4M raised (Rich Miner, Hilary Kivitz, Tim Lee). $700K+ revenue; DoD Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace status. 1 exit.

Mike Pollack

Brixo

5x founder across product, GTM, and marketing leadership.

$11M raised (Bloomberg Beta, Susa Ventures). 2 exits.

Ed Albanese

ThirdLaw

UVA BA, Wharton MBA. Founded Krypton in 2014. Employee #1 at Vectara, first business hire at Cloudera, led IoT at Splunk. Also VMware and MongoDB pre-$5M.

$4.5M raised (True Ventures, Costanoa Ventures). 1 exit.

Tyler Chen

Subtle Computing

Berkeley undergrad, Stanford PhD dropout. Single-cell RNA-seq and microfluidics at Illumina, vehicle engineering at Hyperloop, neural interfaces at Stanford. AI agents for government.

$6M raised (Abstract Ventures, Steve Blank). YC X25.

Anand Atreya

Princeton BSE '07, Stanford MS '11. AI, robotics, and self-driving cars. 2x founder: WiFiSLAM (sold to Apple) and Savvy (sold to Google). Led personal finance product teams at Google.

2 exits (WiFiSLAM → Apple, Savvy → Google)

Andrew Radin

BS/MS CS, Stanford BMI. 5x entrepreneur, CTO then CEO. Built products used by millions in telephony, gaming, and ad tech. Founded Aria Pharmaceuticals. Top 100 AI Leader in Pharma.

Raised from a16z, SoftBank, and others

Erik Juhl

Protobloc

Exited founder building a user-curated data and attestation layer that rewards people for their own participation. Founding team out of Beamery and Kabam.

$650K raised. 1 exit.

Elad Ferber

Synthpop

Stanford & Technion grad. Talpiot (elite IDF unit). 10+ years building AI × healthcare. Founded Spry Health (acquired by ZOLL Itamar). Led engineering for SpaceIL (lunar lander).

$23M raised

Jan Jannink

Synthpop

Stanford CS PhD (Database Group, 2001). Co-founder or founding member of 5 AI & analytics startups, 2 still ongoing, 1 exit. Occasional Stanford CS 193S instructor.

$23M raised

Kazuki Nakayashiki

Glasp

ME Chem & Bio at UTokyo, Business at UC Berkeley. Founded Glasp, a platform for annotating the web with AI. Alum of On Deck, Launch House, Berkeley SkyDeck.