meet the team
Michael Gao
Co-Founder & CEO
Co-founder and Chief Architect & Strategy Officer at Luminous, a photonic AI supercomputer startup backed by Bill Gates that raised $120+ million. Holds 6 US patents in photonics and digital design.
MIT dropout. Scaled mining operations to 1% of the BTC network hashrate from his high school dorm room in 2013. USA Math Olympiad winner and USA Computing Olympiad finalist.
MIT dropout. Scaled mining operations to 1% of the BTC network hashrate from his high school dorm room in 2013. USA Math Olympiad winner and USA Computing Olympiad finalist.
Tina Ju
Co-Founder & CSO
Co-inventor of the first monoclonal antibody therapy for MERS-CoV at the National Institutes of Health. BioE at Stanford. Started the first bio-hacker space at a university.
Dropped out to study creation myths and ontologies across cultures. Started a quant fund. Got into hardware through Bitcoin mining. Strategy is predicated upon perception.
Dropped out to study creation myths and ontologies across cultures. Started a quant fund. Got into hardware through Bitcoin mining. Strategy is predicated upon perception.
David Garrett, PhD
Co-Founder & CTO
Chief Architect and SVP Engineering at Syntiant. Delivered three generations of Syntiant’s Neural Decision Processor (NDP), an ultra low power AI chip. Built a team of 65 engineers and shipped 20 million chips. Watch Syntiant's 1-milliwatt chip play Doom.
IEEE fellow and EE PhD from UVa. Bell Labs. Distinguished Engineer at Broadcom, where he built beam-forming architectures for WiFi used in 1+ billion devices. Holds 100+ US patents.
IEEE fellow and EE PhD from UVa. Bell Labs. Distinguished Engineer at Broadcom, where he built beam-forming architectures for WiFi used in 1+ billion devices. Holds 100+ US patents.
Sagar Reddy
C0-Founder & VP Silicon
Co-founder and CTO of DXCorr, a leading backend chip design firm of 200+ engineers. 23+ years of technical leadership in full-custom chip design and systems architecture.
Built the first standard cell libraries for new process nodes for a number of foundries. Designed hundreds of full-custom IP blocks down to 3nm and completed 60+ full chip tape-outs for the world’s largest semiconductor companies, such as Intel, Samsung, and GlobalFoundries.
Holds patents in memory design and energy optimization techniques.
Built the first standard cell libraries for new process nodes for a number of foundries. Designed hundreds of full-custom IP blocks down to 3nm and completed 60+ full chip tape-outs for the world’s largest semiconductor companies, such as Intel, Samsung, and GlobalFoundries.
Holds patents in memory design and energy optimization techniques.
Gilbert Hendry, PhD
VP Software
VP Software of Lightelligence, a photonic AI hardware startup. Specialized in software-hardware co-design. Built their compiler team from the
ground up.
Computer Architect at Meta. Scaled deployment of machine learning algorithms on Google TensorFlow. Managed ML projects for Azure Cloud at Microsoft. PhD in EE and Photonics from Columbia.
ground up.
Computer Architect at Meta. Scaled deployment of machine learning algorithms on Google TensorFlow. Managed ML projects for Azure Cloud at Microsoft. PhD in EE and Photonics from Columbia.
Where we COME from
FULL STACK TEAM.
AI HARDWARE DNA.
We’re hackers, builders, creators, and most importantly - shippers. Our team holds heritage from building and shipping the world’s first 64-bit CPU to the beam-forming architectures that power the world’s WiFi to the lowest power AI processor in the world. We have a core culture of excellence and execution, with a seasoned team from some of the top institutions in hardware, software and cryptography.
We’re building the VPU not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard. Because challenges allow us to be our most creative. And because it’s fun to tackle complex problems with an awesome team around you.
PhDs held
30%+
US patents held
150+
Chip tapeouts
