Darius Bunandar
Founder and Chief Scientist, Lightmatter
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About the Speaker
Darius Bunandar is a Founder of Lightmatter, a startup developing the next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) processor. Lightmatter’s hardware combines photonic and electronic integrated circuits into a new AI computing architecture that is faster and more efficient than what’s feasible using traditional technologies. Lightmatter secured a Series A funding from Matrix Partners, Spark Capital, and GV (formerly Google Ventures). As Chief Scientist at Lightmatter, Darius coordinates the company’s research and development in new hardware architectures as well as new algorithms.
Before founding Lightmatter, Darius obtained his PhD in physics at MIT studying quantum computation and communications using compact nanophotonic circuits. His interests in computing began when he was simulating extreme physical phenomena using supercomputers. With the Caltech-Cornell Simulating-eXtreme-Spacetimes (SXS) collaboration, he developed software to visualize how binary black holes can distort the night sky by warping space-time with their gravitational pull. He also briefly worked as a Blast Engineer—numerically simulating explosions and performing actual large-scale blast experiments—at BakerRisk: an engineering consulting firm in San Antonio, Texas. He previously earned his BS degrees in both Physics and Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.
