Sean White

Summary

Dr. Sean White is CEO of Inflection AI, an AI Studio where custom generative AI models are crafted, tested, and fine-tuned for customers. This AI is distinguished by its personal intelligence and supportive, empathetic conversational abilities. Sean is dedicated to innovative technology and creative product design improving lives. He has worked across disciplines building strong teams, successful companies, and global organizations. Dr. White works with start-ups and nonprofits in the roles of advisor, investor, and board member. ---- As Chief R&D Officer of Mozilla, Dr. White served on the Mozilla steering committee providing leadership across the company. He built the global, multi-disciplinary Emerging Technologies organization, successfully delivering innovative and impactful technologies and products. As a result, novel programming languages (Rust), codecs (AV1), and architectures (Servo) power the next generation of Firefox. Machine learning (DeepSpeech) and IoT (WebThings) platforms enable new open source ecosystems. Innovative products (Firefox Reality, Hubs) created new opportunities in mixed reality for Mozilla's users. Prior to Mozilla, Dr. White founded and was CEO of BrightSky Labs, a company he incubated while an EIR at Greylock Partners. BrightSky provided creative tools enabled by machine learning for everyday users. Before BrightSky, Dr. White founded the Interaction Ecologies Group at Nokia, leading multiple innovative efforts in new mobile forms and experiences in the areas of wearables, Internet of Things, and mixed reality. His previous roles include CTO of NeoCarta Ventures, Founder of RecNet, VP of Technology for Lycos, Inc. (acquired by Terra Networks), and CTO of WhoWhere? (acquired by Lycos). Prior to that, Sean was a project lead and member of the research staff at Paul Allen's Interval Research Corporation. In addition to 30+ peer-reviewed publications, 3,400 citations, and 20+ patents granted, Dr. White is a 2009 Tech Award Laureate for his work on computer vision-based mobile botanical species identification. He has lectured and taught in the Stanford Program in Human-Computer Interaction and at Columbia University. Dr. White was awarded an appointment as a Visiting Scientist at the Smithsonian Institution and served on the Steering Committee for IEEE’s International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR). Sean earned his B.S. and M.S. in CS from Stanford University and his MS in ME and Ph.D. in CS from Columbia University.