synthetic-media
(3)
Piyush Verma
Piyush Verma is the co-founder and CEO of Neural Defend, an AI cybersecurity startup that detects deepfakes across video, audio, images, and real-time streams. A two-time founder and former MIT, Harvard, and Tsinghua researcher, he previously built Manush Labs, an impact accelerator backed by billionaire Desh Deshpande, and founded the MIT India Initiative. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and MIT Tata Fellow trained in design at IIT Delhi, Verma now works to defend real human identities against synthetic deception, with Neural Defend raising $600K in pre-seed funding and partnering with Zee News on India's first media-led deepfake verification system.
Eric Jang
Eric Seyoung Jang is the Founder and CEO of DeepBrain AI, a Palo Alto-based company building hyper-realistic AI avatars, video synthesis technology, and conversational AI systems. Inspired by AlphaGo's 2016 defeat of Go champion Lee Sedol, he pivoted from fintech to artificial intelligence and built what became the first company to commercially deploy video synthesis at scale - from AI news anchors in Chinese broadcast studios to AI bankers in Korean bank branches. Under his leadership, DeepBrain AI raised $44M in Series B funding at a $180M valuation and set its sights on becoming the world's leading generative AI enterprise.
Michael Matias
Michael Matias is the co-founder and CEO of Clarity, a New York-based AI cybersecurity company building world-leading deepfake detection technology. A Stanford computer science graduate, Unit 8200 IDF veteran, and former partner at Eric Schmidt's Innovation Endeavors, Matias has invested in 80+ deep-tech startups through Matias Ventures, hosted over 1,000 episodes of the 20MinuteLeaders podcast, authored the book 'Age Is Only an Int,' and written for leading Israeli financial newspapers. Clarity raised a $16M seed round in 2024 led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Walden Catalyst Ventures.