# Tom Nakata

> Tom Nakata (Tomofumi Nakata) is the co-founder and CEO of Qlay, a San Francisco AI startup he built after stints at McKinsey, J.P. Morgan, and Disney and a Harvard statistics degree. Qlay began as a generative-AI consumer-sentiment engine and pivoted into AI-powered interview proctoring - eye-gaze tracking, speech-cadence analysis, and multi-camera monitoring that catches AI-assisted cheating in remote technical interviews. Raised across Singapore, Tokyo, and California, Nakata describes his team as 'a shark that never stops,' chasing authenticity and measurable impact while sourcing engineering talent across Africa, Vietnam, and beyond.

- **Role:** Co-Founder & CEO at Qlay
- **Organizations:** Qlay Technologies, McKinsey & Company, J.P. Morgan, The Walt Disney Company, Harvard University
- **Nationality:** Japanese
- **Education:** A.B. in Statistics, Harvard University
- **Known for:** Co-founded and leads Qlay, an AI hiring and interview-proctoring platform backed by a seed round, Won the Audience Award at Global Brain's XLIMIT Demo Day (January 2024), Signed a Fortune 100 automotive client within Qlay's first year

## Career timeline

- **2019** — Graduated from Harvard College with an A.B. in Statistics; member of the Financial Analyst Club
- **2019-2023** — Consultant at McKinsey & Company across Tokyo and Los Angeles offices, focused on consumer-goods marketing strategy
- **2023** — Co-founded Qlay Technologies with Tokumasa Yamashita after meeting through a co-founder matching program
- **2024** — Qlay joined Global Brain's XLIMIT accelerator (cohort 2) and won the Audience Award at XLIMIT Demo Day in January
- **2024** — Within the first year, Qlay contracted a Fortune 100 company to automate consumer sentiment analysis for automotive marketing
- **2025** — Qlay raised a seed round (USD 1.4M total funding); company operates from San Francisco with ~15 employees, focused on AI interview proctoring and engineer hiring

## Achievements

- Co-founded and leads Qlay, an AI hiring and interview-proctoring platform backed by a seed round
- Won the Audience Award at Global Brain's XLIMIT Demo Day (January 2024)
- Signed a Fortune 100 automotive client within Qlay's first year
- Earned a Harvard statistics degree and authored an academic paper predicting box-office performance using PCA and clustering
- Built C-suite strategy at McKinsey, including a project that cut a global electronics maker's net working capital by over $25 million

## Latest updates

- **2025-08** — Qlay's most recent funding recorded as a seed round; total funding reported at $1.4M.
- **2025** — Qlay positioned as an AI interview-proctoring and engineer-hiring platform sourcing global talent, including in Africa and Vietnam.

## Links

- Website: https://qlay.ai
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tnakata/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/tmfmnkt
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/C3OeXK0vVQ2/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/qlay.technologies/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/tom-nakata
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-21