# Umut Isik

> Umut Isik is the co-founder and CEO of Incept AI, a New York voice-AI company that takes drive-thru and phone orders in the noisiest places on earth. A former algebraic geometer turned Principal Applied Scientist at AWS, he spent years building neural networks that pull a single human voice out of acoustic chaos. He also makes mathematical art from simple functions. Incept AI raised a $3M pre-seed led by Rally Ventures in February 2025 and claims 95-97%+ order accuracy with no human in the loop.

- **Role:** Co-Founder & CEO at Incept AI
- **Organizations:** Incept AI, Amazon Web Services, University of California, Irvine, University of Pennsylvania
- **Education:** Ph.D. in Mathematics (algebraic geometry), University of Pennsylvania
- **Known for:** Co-founded and leads Incept AI, reaching 95-97%+ AI-only order completion with ~812ms live conversation latency., Raised $3M pre-seed led by Rally Ventures (Feb 2025) with participation from 10VC., Authored widely cited speech-enhancement papers (Attention Wave-U-Net, PoCoNet, channel-attention dense U-Net); ~1,446 citations, h-index 16 on Google Scholar.

## Career timeline

- **2006-2011** — Ph.D. studies in mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, working on algebraic geometry and category theory.
- **2011-2016** — Academic mathematician, including a stint as Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics at UC Irvine; research spanned algebraic geometry and categorical complexity.
- **2016-2017** — Builds mathvas.com and exhibits mathematical art ('Two Distributions', 'The Fish') at the Bridges/Joint Mathematics Meetings galleries.
- **~2018-2023** — Principal Applied Scientist at Amazon Web Services, building neural audio and speech-enhancement models (Wave-U-Net, PoCoNet, channel-attention U-Net).
- **2023** — Co-founds Incept AI with Justin Foster to bring voice AI to real-world, noisy environments.
- **2024-05** — Incept AI launches its restaurant voice ordering product.
- **2025-02** — Incept AI raises a $3M pre-seed round led by Rally Ventures with 10VC; Ben Fried (ex-Google CIO) joins the board.

## Achievements

- Co-founded and leads Incept AI, reaching 95-97%+ AI-only order completion with ~812ms live conversation latency.
- Raised $3M pre-seed led by Rally Ventures (Feb 2025) with participation from 10VC.
- Authored widely cited speech-enhancement papers (Attention Wave-U-Net, PoCoNet, channel-attention dense U-Net); ~1,446 citations, h-index 16 on Google Scholar.
- Built mathvas.com, a tool turning mathematical functions into visual art, exhibited at mathematical art galleries.
- Earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania and held a Visiting Assistant Professor role at UC Irvine.

## Latest updates

- **2025-02** — Incept AI announced a $3M pre-seed round led by Rally Ventures; Ben Fried joined the board.
- **2024-05** — Incept AI launched its restaurant voice-ordering product, later reporting 97%+ accuracy without human intervention.

## Links

- Website: https://www.isik.dev
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/umut-isik
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/umuti5ik
- GitHub: https://www.github.com/umutisik

---

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