# Varun Tandon

> Varun Tandon is the San Francisco-based co-founder and CEO of Waypoint Transit, an AI company automating municipal planning work. A Stanford computer science graduate with bachelor’s and master’s degrees, he previously led applied machine learning initiatives at Microsoft for Copilot, Designer, and PowerPoint. He founded Waypoint with fellow Stanford graduate Ryan Johnston; the company joined Y Combinator’s Winter 2025 batch.

- **Role:** Co-founder & CEO at Waypoint Transit
- **Organizations:** Waypoint Transit, Microsoft
- **Education:** B.S. in Computer Science, Stanford University, M.S. in Computer Science, Stanford University
- **Known for:** Co-founded Waypoint Transit, a Y Combinator Winter 2025 company., Led applied machine learning work at Microsoft on diffusion models and large language/multimodal models., Waypoint participated in the Lincoln Avenue corridor-study AI pilot with the Transportation Authority of Marin.

## Career timeline

- **—** — At Stanford, co-authored a natural-language-processing course project on simplifying terms-of-service documents with Hannah Zhang and German Enik.
- **2022** — Connor Hogan publicly described building the Rockhopper travel-planning website with Tandon.
- **—** — Led applied machine learning initiatives at Microsoft, including work on Copilot, Designer, and PowerPoint.
- **2024** — Co-founded Waypoint Transit with Ryan Johnston.
- **2025** — Waypoint Transit joined Y Combinator’s Winter 2025 batch.
- **2026** — Listed as a session leader for an April planning symposium on AI task automation alongside Ryan Johnston and Erick Aune.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Waypoint Transit, a Y Combinator Winter 2025 company.
- Led applied machine learning work at Microsoft on diffusion models and large language/multimodal models.
- Waypoint participated in the Lincoln Avenue corridor-study AI pilot with the Transportation Authority of Marin.

## Latest updates

- **2026-04** — A planning-symposium agenda listed Tandon and Ryan Johnston with Erick Aune for a session about planners automating tasks with AI agents; the agenda establishes the listing, not confirmed attendance.
- **2026-04** — TAM’s board materials discussed Waypoint’s Lincoln Avenue AI corridor-study pilot and identified continued needs for local expertise and professional judgment.

## Links

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vrntandon/
- GitHub: https://github.com/varun-tandon

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/varun-tandon
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-08