Ben Lerner

Ben Lerner is the co-founder and CEO of Espresso AI, a New York startup building what it calls the first neural compute optimizer - software that uses large language models to rewrite SQL and reallocate compute so companies cut their Snowflake and Databricks bills by up to 70%. A former Google and DeepMind engineer who worked on search, storage infrastructure, and early code-LLM research, Lerner left Big Tech to merge the two halves of his career - machine learning and systems performance - into a single product. Espresso launched from stealth in May 2024 with over $11 million in seed funding from Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, and FirstMark's Matt Turck.