Naveen Rao is the Vice President of Generative AI at Databricks. He was previously the vice president and general manager of the Artificial Intelligence Products Group at Intel Corporation.

Rao’s organization was responsible for artificial intelligence product development and strategy at Intel, including the deployment of new hardware architectures built specifically to accelerate deep learning in the data center and at the network edge, as well as ongoing software optimizations to accelerate AI application performance of x86-based data center environments.

Trained as both a computer architect and neuroscientist, Rao joined Intel in 2016 with the acquisition of Nervana Systems. As chief executive officer and co-founder of Nervana, he led the company to become a recognized leader in the deep learning field. Before founding Nervana in 2014, Rao was a neuromorphic machines researcher at Qualcomm Inc., where he focused on neural computation and learning in artificial systems. Rao’s earlier career included engineering roles at Kealia Inc., CALY Networks and Sun Microsystems Inc.

Rao earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from Duke University, then spent a decade as a computer architect before going on to earn a Ph.D. in computational neuroscience from Brown University. He has published multiple papers in the area of neural computation in biological systems. Rao has also been granted patents in video compression techniques, with additional patents pending in deep learning hardware and low-precision techniques and in neuromorphic computation.

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