Joseph Bousaba is the CEO of InvenSense and General Manager of TDK Corporation's MEMS Sensors Business Group, leading a global powerhouse in micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) sensing solutions. With over 18 years of senior leadership in the semiconductor industry - spanning Philips Semiconductors, Qualcomm Atheros, and Qualcomm - he stepped into the top role at InvenSense in October 2024, bringing a track record of building multi-hundred-million-dollar businesses at the intersection of motion, sound, and AI-driven sensing.
Mauro Bonomi is the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Minerva Networks, a San Jose-based company he built from the ground up into a global IPTV and OTT software platform serving over 300 operators across 6 continents. A Stanford-trained electrical engineer with deep roots in digital video compression, Bonomi spent decades at the intersection of television and the internet before that intersection became a cliche. His platform powers pay-TV services from linear broadcast to AI-driven content discovery, helping carriers modernize without tearing everything down.
Neschae Fernando is the CEO of Zone24x7, a 22-year-old technology engineering company headquartered in San Jose, California, with a major hub in Sri Lanka. With a dual background in electrical engineering (MS and BS from UCLA) and enterprise IT delivery at Cisco, Fernando leads a 270-person team that sits at a rare intersection: companies capable of integrating hardware and software end-to-end. Under his leadership since June 2022, Zone24x7 has won seven industry awards in 2025 alone, including Gold at NBQSA and the IoT Technology of the Year Award, while expanding its AI, RFID, and cognitive vision platforms across 50+ enterprise clients globally.
Abe Tarapani is the CEO of Atlas AI, a Palo Alto-based geospatial AI company that uses satellite imagery and machine learning to generate actionable insights on economic, agricultural, and infrastructure trends across emerging markets. A Yale-trained electrical engineer and Presidential Scholar recognized by the Clinton White House, Tarapani has spent nearly two decades at the intersection of renewable energy, data for development, and social impact. He joined Atlas AI in October 2020, steering a company founded by Stanford professors toward enterprise partnerships with the World Bank, DARPA, McKinsey, and Airbus, while earning recognition as a 2024 Google Cloud Partner of the Year and Gavi INFUSE Pacesetter.
Dr. Jiayuan Fang is the Founder and CEO of Afficient Academy, a Silicon Valley edtech company that uses patented AI-driven adaptive learning to help K-12 students advance a full grade level in 2-5 months. A former UC Berkeley PhD and electrical engineering professor turned serial entrepreneur, Fang previously founded Sigrity Inc., which was acquired by Cadence Design Systems for approximately $80 million in 2012. His pivot to education was sparked by his own three children's experience with inadequate after-school tutoring - leading him to build a platform that identifies not just what students get wrong, but why.
Mark Chung is the co-founder and CEO of Verdigris Technologies, a Mountain View-based AI company that provides circuit-level electrical intelligence for mission-critical data centers and commercial buildings. A Stanford-trained electrical engineer who spent 15 years designing chips at AMD, PA Semi (Apple), and NetLogic (Broadcom), Chung founded Verdigris in 2011 after a $560 electricity bill sparked an obsession with making buildings as transparent as spreadsheets. Today, Verdigris monitors 2+ gigawatts of peak demand across 20 million square feet of facilities for clients like T-Mobile, Verizon, NVIDIA, and Google, using 8kHz waveform sensors that detect equipment failures up to 21 days before they cause outages.
Matt Riley co-founded Swiftype (YC W12) in 2012, built it into a leading search-as-a-service platform, and sold it to Elastic in 2017. He then spent nearly eight years at Elastic as GVP & GM of Search, overseeing product, engineering, design, and developer relations for one of the world's most widely used search platforms. In late 2025, he returned to Y Combinator as a Visiting Partner - advising the next generation of founders using hard-won lessons from the full founder arc: zero to startup, startup to acquisition, acquisition to enterprise scale.
Mar Hershenson is a Spanish-American venture capitalist, electrical engineer, and serial entrepreneur who co-founded Pear VC (originally Pejman Mar Ventures) in 2013 with no prior VC experience - learning the trade from Amazon-purchased books. A Stanford PhD who holds 14 patents and founded three startups (two acquired), she has grown Pear VC to over $800M AUM with a portfolio that includes DoorDash, Guardant Health, Gusto, and Dropbox. A perennial Forbes Midas List honoree (#29 in 2021), she also teaches Stanford's Lean Launchpad course, champions women in VC through All Raise and her Female Founder Circles initiative, and is known for her conviction that great founders are made, not born.
Lisa Su is the President and CEO of AMD, leading one of the greatest corporate turnarounds in tech history. Since taking the helm in 2014, she transformed AMD from a struggling chipmaker on the brink of irrelevance into a $378 billion semiconductor titan that rivals Intel and powers the AI revolution. The MIT-trained electrical engineer with a PhD in semiconductors isn't just building chips - she's reshaping the future of computing, from gaming consoles to data centers to artificial intelligence. Named Time's CEO of the Year in 2024 and recognized as one of the world's most powerful women, Su runs toward the hardest problems in an industry where failure means obsolescence.