About Us

Rich Tong

Rich has had a long career helping companies take advantage of technology revolutions. He was co-founder of Surround.io, a leader in computer vision and machine learning in the automotive industry, eventually sold to Lear Corporation, a Tier-1 automotive supplier.

He helped usher in the mobile and cloud revolution as a co-founder of two VC firms with $5B under management, Ignition Ventures and Qiming Ventures, which ushered in such leaders as DocuSign and Xiaomi. He led investments in mobile and cloud technologies with companies acquired by FIS, HP, TenCent and Apple.

He was part of the Windows revolution working at Microsoft as head of marketing for Windows 3.1, Windows NT, Microsoft enterprise products and Office. Prior to joining Microsoft, he worked on the first PC-based trader workstation at Morgan Stanley & Co. and the first PC-based QA systems at GM Electro-Motive Division.

Rich started his career during the microprocessor revolution. He was Member of Technical Staff for Bell Telephone Laboratories and LSI Logic Research Fellow at the Stanford Integrated Circuit Laboratory. He earned an MBA and MSEE from Stanford University. He holds 27 patents in computer vision, machine learning and robotics.

LinkedIn

John McQueen

John McQueen is a seasoned executive with experience in startups, growing companies, and large enterprises. He started his career at Apple, then SoftImage (which won an Oscar for Special Effect for the original Jurassic Park), and subsequently was a senior executive at Microsoft, Real Networks, and AOL/Time Warner. James Bond is his hero, and he’s always ready for a challenge.

LinkedIn

Satoshi Nakajima

Satoshi Nakajima is a seasoned executive and technologist with experience in startups and large-scale enterprises. Today, he is a business expert and has developed several open-source AI projects.

At Microsoft, he was a Software Architect who designed and built the architecture for Windows 95 Explorer and the very important Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 and 4.0. He subsequently co-founded Ignition Partners, a world-class venture firm. He was Chief Software Architect for Square Enix, a leading Japanese game vendor, and developed one of the first photo-sharing applications that debuted in the top 200 iTunes applications in 2008 and remained the top sharing application for the next three years. He subsequently led his company UIEvolution to become the only Tier-1 software-only automotive supplier in the world.

LinkedIn

Paul Maritz

Paul has had a distinguished career in technology. He was a product manager at Intel before joining Microsoft where he eventually became a member of the Office of the President responsible for all Microsoft Systems and Tools products including Windows, Windows NT, Visual Studio and all Enterprise products.

He then started Pi Corp to pioneer cloud computing before it was acquired by EMC. He subsequently led the spin out of VMware as CEO creating billions of dollars in value before leading Pivotal, a leader in hybrid cloud computing. before it was acquired by Dell-EMC.

He currently is our Executive Chairman of TNE.ai in addition to board positiong across a wide range of companies focus on technology, Quantum computing, Enterprise software and other critical areas.

LinkedIn

Dave Cotter

Dave Cotter works on product strategy. As a technology leader and entrepreneur with over three decades of experience, Dave has served as the CEO of three startups and has managed multi-billion-dollar businesses. He has held leadership roles in product and engineering at Amazon, AWS, zulily, Oracle, RealNetworks, and Nordstrom. Most recently, he was the Chief Product Officer at Leafly (LFLY), where he led engineering, product management, and UX, playing a key role in the company’s public offering.

LinkedIn

Peter Zatloukal

Peter Zatloukal is a recognized leader in AI, blending strategic vision with hands-on technical expertise.

He led and managed an applied research team of 100+ experts in machine learning, computer vision, and software engineering at Apple where he successfully shipped cutting-edge AI models integrated into products including iPhone, Vision Pro, and Apple Intelligence.  His team has published multiple research papers at ICML, ICLR, and other conferences. Peter holds 35+ patents in software engineering, wireless communications, and artificial intelligence.

Peter also launched voice shopping at Amazon, built advanced Natural User Interfaces at Microsoft, launched Xbox One, and shipped enterprise-grade tech for mobile phones and global-scale distributed systems.

Peter’s approach balances innovation with practical execution, delivering solutions that blend cutting-edge research and real-world applicability.

LinkedIn

Rakuto Furutani

Rakuto Furutani is a highly experienced software developer and architect who has built world-class systems for the automotive, hospitality, and other industries. He is an expert in cloud-scale systems, machine learning models and fine-tuning, and machine learning operations (MLOps).

His UIE services are widely used in leading automotive products worldwide that provide advanced smartphone integration in vehicles such as Lexus Enform, Toyota Link, and Entune. He has also developed sophisticated mission-critical systems like iTron, Intel Atom, and other low-power devices.

LinkedIn

Matthew Arksey

Matthew Arksey is a product manager and engineer with over 30 years of experience in a wide variety of industries. He has designed products for the mobile, medical, industrial, and consumer industries. He has led product efforts integrating manufacturing, design, and marketing to create world-class products. He also understands software product testing, machine learning applications, and business analysis. You can often find him kite boarding if he’s not writing AI applications.

LinkedIn

Paul Davis

Paul leads our efforts to capture and define the needs of enterprise customers and designing and building the AI-based approaches, systems, and interfaces to satisfy them.

Paul was recruited to early (sub-1000 employees) Microsoft by Steve Ballmer. In his first position there, Paul began the practice of Developer Relations at Microsoft. While helping establish Windows as the dominant productivity environment of the last 30 years, Paul invented the Dynamic Data Exchange protocol for inter-application communication. Paul then became Program Manager for Word for the Mac, with responsibility for determining feature sets, designing user interface, producing user documentation, and project management. Paul shipped two versions to great reviews and dominant market share.

LinkedIn

Lucas Hahn

Lucas Hahn is a software architect with a track record of building world-class software across a variety of industries. He has expertise in artificial intelligence, machine learning, distributed computing, and cloud systems.

He is also a pianist, composer, and producer whose work draws upon his experiences in the worlds of jazz, classical, and indie rock music. He has had the privilege to share the stage or record with such luminaries as Terence Blanchard, Julian Lage, Jamie Cullum, Mads Tolling, and Andrew Van Tassel. He has also performed at many premier music venues, including the Monterey Jazz Festival, SFJAZZ Center, Kuumbwa Jazz Center, Vail Jazz Festival, and PDX Jazz Festival.

LinkedIn, Apple Music and Bandcamp

Steven Gottlieb

Steven leads our marketing and communications efforts. Over the course of his career, Steven has worked with a broad and diverse set of organizations, from Fortune 100 companies to founders of emerging technology companies; scientists working in the fields of materials science, energy storage, and vaccines; financiers of innovation and real estate; top administrators of health care systems and university presidents; artists and athletes; elected officials and government institutions; and global aid and health professionals. And his client have participated in every digital transformation cycle over the last 30 years.

Competition has always played an important part in his life: Steven is a two-time NCAA All-American and 1989 NCAA tennis champion. He maintains a volunteer involvement and connection with the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island.

LinkedIn

Isamu Arimoto

Isamu Arimoto is a seasoned technologist with experience in a wide variety of industries and technologies. He is on the Board of the Singularity Society and supports several well-known open-source projects such as GraphAI and SlashGPT.

He has been the co-founder of several technology startups and large companies focused on building the best software there is. He prefers to remain, as all good experts in their field, anonymous.😸

LinkedIn

Deon Blaauw

Deon Blaauw spent the better part of a decade working with uncrewed/autonomous robotics in one form or another. He specializes in embedded flight control system design for a large variety of vehicles, including fixed wings, rotary wings, and multirotors at Siemens and Lockheed.

He knows how to build mission-critical systems. In the last couple of years, with the tremendous success of transformers and transfer learning, he has started to use machine learning in a variety of business applications and his true love, robotics, to help robots better understand the physical world.

LinkedIn

Dave Chen

Dave is co-founder and CEO of Equilibrium Capital Group which he founded nearly 20 years ago with a mission, to transform our planet into shared sustainable prosperity through capital markets.

Equilibrium is a leading sustainability-driven asset management firm that develops sustainable finance and active ESG strategies in sustainable food & agriculture and carbon transition infrastructure. With offices in San Francisco, Portland, and London, it serves a global group of institutional investors.

Dave served on the board of HNC Software when it was merged with FICO (NASDAQ:HNCS, now NYSE:FIC), the pioneer in neural net application software serving the banking industry with industry leading real time credit card fraud detection, healthcare insurance fraud detection and later applied to e-commerce optimization.

He is also Adjunct Professor of Finance at the Kellogg School Management at Northwestern University where is Director of the Kellogg Impact Investing Program. He has also served as Chairman of the Portland Oregon Branch of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank. And he was general partner of OVP Venture Partners and a co-founder of GeoTrust (acquired by VeriSign) as well as VP Marketing at Mentor Graphics.

He advises TNE.ai on its strategy with industrial, agricultural and manufacturing companies and its overseas strategies.

LinkedIn

Simon Davies

Simon is a business leader with experience across a wide range of technologies. He has been an advisor and investor to many businesses across many sectors. He was Vice President of International at Wildseed, a next generation mobile software company, and when that company was acquired by AOL/Time Warner, he served as VP of Business Development for AOL/Tegix. Prio to that he was at Avid Technology where he development international markets for their media and entertainment products. He was a General Manager at SoftImage, the winner of an Special Effects Academy Award for its work on Jurassic Park.

LinkedIn

Duncan Ledwith

Duncan Ledwith is a technology leader with over 30 years of experience in emerging technologies and a strong focus on market validation, emphasizing solving customer problems over being technology-led, including at the University of Auckland’s Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, where he leads programs turning research into impactful ventures, that will lead productivity in his adopted home of New Zealand,

Formerly at Microsoft, he developed and launched their technical support strategy, launched Windows Mobile in Europe with Tier 1 carriers, as well as MSN in APAC, and has also founded and led notable pioneering startups in the mobile, digital music, and insurance sectors.

At TNE.AI, he leverages this unique blend of enterprise leadership and startup agility to accelerate the adoption of TNE’s Ai solutions across APAC’s diverse markets

He is also strong supporter of female founders, including serving on the Board of “Microdreams”, a micro-finance NFP, which has provided around US$300m in micro-loans, to 280,000 women in the South Pacific region.

LinkedIn