Naveen Rao is Founder and CEO of Unconventional AI, a neuromorphic computing startup building biology-scale efficient AI hardware valued at $4.5 billion.

Rao holds a PhD in Computational Neuroscience from Brown University and a BSEE from Duke University. He previously served as VP of AI at Databricks and was a neuromorphic machines researcher at Qualcomm.

Rao is a serial entrepreneur who founded and sold Nervana Systems to Intel for $350 million in 2016 and MosaicML to Databricks for $1.3 billion in 2023. He personally invested $10 million of his own capital into Unconventional AI.

Unconventional AI raised a record $475 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed, with participation from Sequoia, Jeff Bezos, and others. The company is developing analog chips that aim for 1,000x better efficiency than current silicon.

Rao is pioneering neuromorphic computing to solve AI's energy crisis, leveraging his unique background as both a neuroscientist and processor architect. The company aims to achieve brain-scale efficiency (20 watts) for AI workloads that currently consume megawatts of power.