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AI-Fueled Startups
We pair the best AI minds in the world with successful entrepreneurs to build AI startups together.
We're looking for entrepreneurs with big ideas and technologists who can help deliver them to millions of people.
Three Ways to Join the Incubator
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CTO Residency Program
Our full-time CTO Residency Program trains talented engineers on the latest in Deep Learning and Artificial Intelligence and helps them launch the next billion-dollar AI startup.
Over a 12-month period, residents get exclusive mentorship from many of the best AI minds in the world, pair with successful entrepreneurs or early startups to bring a new company to market, and exit the incubator with significant co-founder equity.
Ideal candidates are talented, hands-on engineers, typically at a senior level. Or, someone who was a past startup CTO.
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Entrepreneur in Residence
We help entrepreneurs build their AI team and accelerate AI capabilities.
We offer collaboration with 75+ AI PhDs and researchers, CTOs who can go-to-market, MBA interns, office space, up to $100K in funding, and fast-track access to VCs. We also offer help with recruiting, immigration, PR, sales, marketing, and patent filing.
We mostly work with entrepreneurs in Seattle, or those willing to relocate.
Ideal entrepreneurs have successfully led efforts to build a new tech product, take it to market, and drive real revenues.
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Early-Stage Companies
We help startups build their AI team and accelerate their AI capabilities.
We offer collaboration with 75+ AI PhDs and researchers, CTOs who can go-to-market, MBA interns, office space, up to $100K in funding, and fast-track access to VCs. We also offer help with recruiting, immigration, PR, sales, marketing, and patent filing.
We mostly work with early startups in Seattle, or those willing to relocate.
Ideal startups have done a meaningful amount of work to validate demand and are mostly looking for technical AI help.
Our Technical Capabilities
Google has DeepMind. Facebook has FAIR. Microsoft has MSR-AI.
And now, you have AI2.
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Deep Learning
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Machine Learning
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Computer Vision
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Natural Language Processing (NLP)
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Speech (ASR) and Waveform Analysis
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Conversational Artificial Intelligence
Who We Are
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Jacob Colker
Jacob Colker is an early-stage startup leader with 10+ years of experience as CEO, GM, CMO, and 2x founder. He teaches entrepreneurship at the University of Washington Foster Business School and is an active angel investor, mentor, and advisor in the Pacific Northwest. Jacob was formerly a political campaign operative with the Democratic Party. -
Vu Ha
Vu Ha is a technologist with 20+ years of experience building products at some of the largest companies in the world. Most notably, Vu led applied research and engineering teams at Microsoft's AdCenter Labs and Bing. He co-founded SemanticScholar.org and led its development through its first public launch. Vu holds a Ph.D. in AI from the University of Wisconsin. -
Oren Etzioni
Dr. Oren Etzioni is Chief Executive Officer at AI2. He has been a Professor at the University of Washington's Computer Science department since 1991. His awards include Seattle's Geek of the Year (2013), and he has founded or co-founded several companies, including Farecast and Decide. He has written over 100 technical papers, as well as commentary on AI for The New York Times and Nature. He helped to pioneer meta-search, online comparison shopping, machine reading, and Open Information Extraction. -
James Allard
James Allard is the COO at AI2. James specializes in Operations and Finance and has had founder or leadership roles in organizations ranging from a large multi-national software company to start-ups in various industries. James continues to focus on operational excellence and financial efficiency at AI2, and works to build a culture that will allow AI2 to achieve all of its goals relating to AI for the common good. James has an MBA and a JD and was a corporate and international trade attorney in his early career. -
Lauren Krainski
Lauren has eight years of technical, strategy, and marketing consulting experience working for Deloitte Consulting, Alcoa, and a Seattle-based SaaS startup advisory firm. Lauren is currently completing her MBA at the UW Foster School of Business, where she is concentrating on Entrepreneurship and Analytics. Lauren also holds both an Economics degree and a Marketing degree from the University of Pittsburgh. -
Gaurav Oberoi
Gaurav Oberoi is widely-respected amongst many Seattle entrepreneurs. He was the founder of BillMonk (acquired by Obopay), the founder of Precision Polling (acquired by Survey Monkey), and is also an active angel investor in Estately, Glowforge, Paperflip, and more. -
T.A. McCann
T.A. McCann is a long-time leader of the Seattle startup community. He was previously EIR at Providence Healthcare, founder of Rival IQ (competitive marketing analytics), founder of Gist (acquired by Blackberry), and is an active angel investor and advisor in over 30 companies including CreativeLive, SkillJar, Csats and Ass.st. Additionally, T.A. serves on the board of Guidant Financial, Volt Athletics, VendorHawk and Splash.org. -
Kirby Winfield
Kirby Winfield is one of the most seasoned startup operators and angel investors in Seattle. He was a founding team member and operating executive at back-to-back tech IPOs, with Go2Net (GNET) and Marchex (MCHX). He also has two more exits as operating CEO, with AdXpose (acquired by comScore) and Dwellable (acquired by HomeAway). Additionally, Kirby is an angel investor in over 20 companies. -
Alessya Labzhinova
Alessya Labzhinova studied Applied Math and Russian Literature at the University of Washington as an undergrad. For the past nine years she worked as a Software Engineer and Program Manager at Amazon building forecasting platforms, data science tools and solving latency problems on a massive scale. Her interests lie in data science platforms, reproducible research, forecasting methods, and education technology entrepreneurship. -
James Baird
James Baird studied Computer Science and English Literature at Western Washington University. He has eleven years of experience as a software engineer, and has built frontend systems, backend systems, and mobile apps for a variety of companies in the Seattle area. -
Michale Petrochuk
Michael Petrochuk graduated from the University of Washington with a bachelor from the Computer Science department. He founded a Nonprofit organization, Husky Nation, that received the world record title of Largest Exercise Ball Class with 450 people. He received several awards including TigerLaunch Semi-Finalist, Dubhacks 1st Place, and Sears Independent Track Grand Prize. Michael interned at Google, Uber, Lattice (acquired by Apple), Stylyze, and vCita as machine learning engineer and full-stack developer.
Incubator Companies
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ClusterOne
ClusterOne's deep learning platform helps data scientists spend their time on modeling, not on set up. The product works both in the cloud and with on-prem environments, with flexibility to expand between the two, with zero DevOps.
Traction: Joined AI2 incubator (Jan 2018)
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Blue Canoe
Blue Canoe Learning helps non-native English speakers improve their pronunciation and business communication.
Traction: Raised $1.4M seed (2017)
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XNOR.AI
XNOR.ai’s technology lets you run deep learning models efficiently, directly on your phone, IoT device, or an embedded CPU, without relying on datacenters or network connectivity.
Traction: Raised $2.6M seed (2017)
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ACQUIRED
KITT.AI
KITT.AI is developing a conversational language engine known as ChatFlow and a “hotword” detection platform known as Snowboy. In July 2017 KITT.AI was acquired by Chinese search giant Baidu after being approached by multiple bidders.
Traction: Acquired by Baidu (2017)
Incubator Jobs
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