About OSARO
We are OSARO, a San Francisco-based company focused on AI for industrial automation. We’re building technology for the factories, warehouses, and logistics systems of the 21st century.
We were founded to build technology and products that make robots smarter. Not only do we lead our peers in practical revenue-generating applications, we also have released 2 products, have deployments on 4 continents, and have relationships with several major global automation suppliers and integrators.
As the currently brittle global supply chain is besieged by pandemic, fires, and climate change, e-commerce is exploding and so is the demand for our products. Our customers are investing in smart robotics automation to improve productivity now, to build operational resilience against future shocks, and to create a better and safer workplace for the 21st century.
Our Team
50 Employees: 23 Masters, 12 PhDs
Engineering is 60% of the Organization
Mean 8 Years of Work Experience
Diverse Team from 15 Countries
2 Offices - Tokyo & San Francisco
Expertise in Deep Learning, Reinforcement Learning, Motion Planning, Software Engineering, Robotic Controls, Warehouse Technology, and Business Strategy
Founders
Derik Pridmore
CEO
Derik was previously a venture capitalist, hedge fund manager, and angel investor, and has over a decade of investment and operational experience. Derik was a Principal at Founders Fund, a venture fund led by Peter Thiel. At Founders Fund, Derik drove investments in a variety of companies including DeepMind, where he worked closely with the founding team. Derik is also an investor in New York based deep learning startup Clarifai. Prior to OSARO, Derik founded and managed Arda Capital Management, a quantitative equity hedge fund. Derik holds B.S. degrees in Physics and Computer Science (2001) and an M.Eng. degree in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering (2004) from MIT.
Michael Kahane
CTO
Michael brings over 20 years of experience in managing diverse engineering teams. His background includes developing high-performance signal processing mixed hardware/software platforms. Most recently he was a senior engineer and applications manager at Samsung semiconductors. Michael earned his B.Sc. (1995), M.Sc. (1998), degrees in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the Ben-Gurion University in Israel.
Board Members
Scott Banister
Technology entrepreneur and angel investor, IronPort Systems, PayPal, eBay, SpaceX
Megan Guy
Technology investor, King River Capital, Goldman Sachs, The Nature Conservancy, Angeleno Group
Antoine Blondeau
Technology entrepreneur and investor, Alpha Intelligence Capital, Sentient Technologies, Darpa, Siri
Senior Leadersip
Kevin Pope
VP of Engineering, Applied Digital Access, Mahi Networks, Hammerhead Systems, Calix, UC Berkeley
Gemma Ross
Director of Operations, Kindred, DreamWorks Animation, Dartmouth
Rob McGrorty
VP of Product, Axiom / Knowable, UCLA
Khashayar Rohanimanesh
ML Director of Research, Ph.D. UMass Amherst, Postdoc @ MIT
Sid Henderson
VP of Sales, Deutsche Bank, Clothespin, MIT
Advisors
Richard Sutton
Professor and iCORE chair Department of Computing Science University of Alberta
Benjamin Van Roy
Professor Management Science and Engineering Electrical Engineering Computer Science Stanford University
Noah Goodman
Assistant Professor of Psychology, Computer Science and Linguistics Stanford University
Publications
"Self-Supervised Goal-Conditioned Pick and Place"
C. Devin, P. Rowghanian, C. Vigorito, W. Richards, K. Rohanimanesh
RSS 2020 VLRRM Workshop
"Depth by Poking: Learning to Estimate Depth from Self-Supervised Grasping",
B. Goodrich, A. Kuefler, and W. Richards
International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2020) [PATENT PENDING]
"Imitation Learning from Visual Data with Multiple Intentions"
A. Tamar, K. Rohanimanesh, Y. Chow, C. Virgorito, B. Goodrich, M. Kahane, and Derik Pridmore
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2018) [PATENT APPROVED]