Dialogues with Leaders: Networking with Experts in Human-Centred Design

Vishnu Hari is the founder and CEO of ego AI: a Y Combinator backed Applied AI Research Lab building the future of human-like AI characters in videogames and virtual worlds that recently closed a $7m seed round led by Patron with participation from Accel, Pear, Boost VC & Dentsu Ventures. Before founding ego, Vishnu was leading product at Meta AI in applied AI research for both FAIR team and the Horizon Metaverse team at Reality Labs. Prior to that Vishnu held engineering leadership roles in AI out of San Francisco. Vishnu’s academic background is in Astrophysics but instead of pursuing his PhD, decided to drop out of his graduate program to move to San Francisco from Toronto. Vishnu was raised in Singapore and is an alumni of ACS (Independent).

Founded in 2023, ego AI is building the next generation of AI-powered characters: persistent, believable, and cross-platform. With a team of engineers from Meta AI, Riot and Square and researchers from MIT, CMU, UPenn and the University of Toronto, ego’s vision is to power the future of games, social platforms, and digital experiences with human-like characters. Backed by Y Combinator, leading investors and supported by partnerships with the Singapore Government under the AI Singapore initiative, ego is headquartered in San Francisco with additional research operations in Singapore and Tokyo. For more information, visit www.egoai.com.