# Fardad Zabetian

> Fardad Zabetian is the founder and CEO of KUDO, a New York-based platform that puts live human interpretation and AI translation inside video meetings in more than 200 languages. An engineer by training, he spent two decades building the physical hardware of multilingual conferencing - including a role in the 2012 redesign of the United Nations General Assembly Hall - before turning that expertise into a cloud platform. He has founded five companies, invested in more than 20 startups, and built his career around a single idea: that language should not be the border between people.

- **Role:** Founder and CEO at KUDO
- **Organizations:** KUDO, Media Vision, Conference Rental USA, AVAtronics
- **From:** Iran
- **Nationality:** Iranian-American
- **Education:** Graduate studies (engineering), Graduate school in San Francisco
- **Known for:** Founded five companies, two of them before age 24, Two of his companies named among the fastest-growing businesses in America by Daily Deal Flow, Contributed to the 2012 redesign of the UN General Assembly Hall in New York

## Career timeline

- **pre-2000** — Built audiovisual and conference systems in Tehran, Europe and the Middle East before age 26
- **2000** — Moved to the United States; a promised position at Sun Microsystems fell through amid the dot-com bust
- **2002** — Founded Media Vision in San Francisco, selling conferencing hardware and language interpretation equipment
- **2007** — Founded Conference Rental USA, leasing high-tech interpretation and conference equipment
- **2009** — Provided interpreter infrastructure for the North American Leaders Summit (Obama, Harper, Calderon)
- **2012** — Played a role in the redesign of the United Nations meeting facilities, including the General Assembly Hall in New York
- **2016** — Co-founded AVAtronics, a Swiss active noise-canceling technology company
- **2017** — Co-founded KUDO with Chief Language Officer Ewandro Magalhaes
- **2021** — Launched KUDO Marketplace for booking and paying professional interpreters; raised Series A funding

## Achievements

- Founded five companies, two of them before age 24
- Two of his companies named among the fastest-growing businesses in America by Daily Deal Flow
- Contributed to the 2012 redesign of the UN General Assembly Hall in New York
- Delivered interpretation infrastructure for the 2009 North American Leaders Summit
- Scaled KUDO from 10 to 100 employees in nine months during 2020
- Grew KUDO usage from 2 million interpreting minutes per week to 4 million per day
- Raised roughly $27M in total funding for KUDO
- Angel investor in more than 20 startups
- Member of the Forbes Technology Council

## Latest updates

- **2021-03** — KUDO raised a Series A round and launched KUDO Marketplace, a platform-agnostic marketplace for finding, booking and paying professional interpreters.
- **2021-03** — Reported total funding reached roughly $27M for KUDO.

## Links

- Website: https://kudo.ai
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fardadz/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/kudoway/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kudoinc/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/fardad-zabetian
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-07-17