Amir Husain, recognized as Austin’s Top Technology Entrepreneur of the Year and Onalytica’s Top 100 global Artificial Intelligence influencers, is a serial entrepreneur and inventor based in Austin, Texas. He is the Founder & CEO of SparkCognition, Inc. an award-winning Machine Learning/AI driven Cognitive Analytics Company, a Member of. the Board of Advisors for IBM Watson, a member of the Forbes Technology Council and a Member of the Board of Advisors for The University of Texas at Austin, Dept. of Computer Science. In March, 2016, Amir was named by the Under40 organization to Austin’s 40 under 40, and secured the award for the Technology & Sciences category. In September, 2016, he was listed by the Austin Business Journal on their Best CEOs of 2016 list. Amir launched SparkCognition in April, 2014 with support from Michael Dell’s MSD Capital, L.P., TEF CA, Verizon Ventures, Chicago Mercantile Exchange Ventures and Alameda Ventures.. In June, 2014, SparkCognition won the global InnovateApp 2014 competition for the most innovative application of 2014. Additionally, SparkCognition was the only US company to receive the Nokia Open Innovation Challenge 2015 (NOIC) award from hundreds of international innovators. While in Graduate School, in 1998, at the University of Texas at Austin, Amir developed the ideas that led to his first venture-funded startup, Kurion. After Kurion was acquired by iSyndicate, Amir started a systems management company that merged with PC Blade manufacturer ClearCube Technology. Amir was appointed ClearCube’s Chief Technology Officer and later to the Board of Directors of ClearCube’s holding company. In 2009, Amir became CEO of VDIworks, a Cloud Computing and Virtualization software vendor and grew the company successfully till his departure in early 2013.. Amir is a prolific inventor with 22 awarded and over 40 pending US patent applications to his credit. In 2013, a low cost computing platform Amir invented was inducted into the collection of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, the world’s largest such institution. His work has also been published in IEEE conferences and in leading tech journals including Network World, Computer World and others. His companies have won numerous awards such as the 2015 Austin Chamber of Commerce A-List, the InnovateApp 2014 competition, the VMWORLD Gold award, Network World’s Hottest Products, CRN’s Innovation award and PC World’s best product award. Amir also serves as advisor and board member to Makerarm, uStudio, ClearCube Technology, S&BMK Foundation, Alif Laila Children’s Educational Society, and others.
