# William Falcon

> William Falcon is the co-founder and CEO of Lightning AI and creator of PyTorch Lightning. A Venezuelan-born former US naval officer, he studied computer science and statistics at Columbia, pursued AI research at NYU and Facebook AI Research, and co-founded college-finance startup NextGenVest before building tools for AI development.

- **Role:** Co-founder and CEO at Lightning AI
- **Organizations:** Lightning AI, PyTorch Lightning, NextGenVest, New York University, Facebook AI Research, Columbia University, Goldman Sachs, US Navy, oddbits
- **Nationality:** Venezuelan
- **Education:** BA, Computer Science and Statistics; mathematics minor; magna cum laude, Columbia University, PhD studies in artificial intelligence; on leave; advised by Kyunghyun Cho and Yann LeCun, New York University
- **Known for:** Created PyTorch Lightning, publicly released in 2019., Received Google DeepMind and NSF graduate research fellowships., Built and led the NextGenVest engineering team credited by Columbia with helping students access over $39 million in financial aid.

## Career timeline

- **2008-2011** — Served as a US naval officer; underwent SEAL training and served with Special Reconnaissance Team One.
- **2011-2013** — Worked at Merrill Lynch before attending Columbia.
- **2014-2016** — Built consumer iOS apps including Hushbook/Hushfeed and Poke Prism, alongside client projects.
- **2015-2016** — Worked as a software engineer at Goldman Sachs.
- **2016** — Partnered with Kelly Peeler as NextGenVest co-founder and CTO; joined Liam Paninski’s Columbia research lab.
- **2018** — Graduated from Columbia; began NYU PhD studies; NextGenVest was acquired by CommonBond.
- **2019** — Open-sourced PyTorch Lightning, worked at Facebook AI Research and co-founded Grid AI with Luis Capelo.
- **2020** — Grid AI launched publicly with $18.6 million in total funding.
- **2022** — Grid AI became Lightning AI and announced a $40 million Series B led by Coatue.
- **2023** — Lightning AI Studio launched.
- **2024** — Lightning AI announced a $50 million equity investment.
- **2026** — Lightning AI merged with Voltage Park; Falcon remained CEO in the merger announcement.

## Achievements

- Created PyTorch Lightning, publicly released in 2019.
- Received Google DeepMind and NSF graduate research fellowships.
- Built and led the NextGenVest engineering team credited by Columbia with helping students access over $39 million in financial aid.
- Co-founded Lightning AI with Luis Capelo.
- Led Lightning AI through its 2026 merger with Voltage Park.

## Latest updates

- **2026-02** — Appeared on SuperDataScience episode 965 discussing the Voltage Park merger and his career.
- **2026-01** — Lightning AI announced its merger with Voltage Park, with Falcon as CEO and Ozan Kaya as president.

## Links

- Website: https://www.williamfalcon.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wfalcon
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/_willfalcon
- GitHub: https://github.com/williamFalcon
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN6soC14zRoICAORDuwPCIw

---

Profile page: https://yespress.io/william-falcon
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-27