Thierry is a co-founder of Seattle-based startup OctoML, where he spends his time building a platform to automate the deployment of machine learning models to a multitude of cloud, edge and IoT systems. Thierry got his Ph.D. from University of Washington where he spent his time building up Apache TVM, a now widely-used open source deep learning compiler. His research aimed to facilitate hardware-software co-design by introducing a complete open source deep learning stack (TVM+VTA) comprising a deep learning compiler and a modular hardware accelerator design. Today he focuses on extending the TVM framework to better support NPU type co-processors on edge systems, including microcontrollers.

Chris is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and technologist, now VP of AI Engineering and Product for Webex Collaboration in Cisco. Most recently he was co-founder and CEO of BabbleLabs, a speech ML company, acquired by Cisco in 2020. Prior to Babblelabs, Chris served as CTO for Cadence’s IP Group, which he joined after Cadence’s acquisition of Tensilica, the company he founded in 1997 to develop extensible processors. He led Tensilica as CEO and later, CTO, to develop one of the most prolific embedded processor architectures, especially for compute-intensive embedded processing. Chris was a pioneer in developing RISC architecture and helped found MIPS Computer Systems in 1984. He has an MS and PhD in EE from Stanford and a BA in physics from Harvard. He was named an IEEE Fellow in 2015 for his work in development of microprocessor technology.