This is TalentSeer’s AI News Roundup for the first half of June 2020. You can find the most relevant and recent news about AI talent, aimed specifically at tech leaders, VCs, and members of the AI field. Subscribe here to receive these roundups twice a month via email.
Startup Job Loss At Lowest Since The Pandemic Begun in March
Weekly startup layoffs have now dropped to 2,803 for 5/27-6/2, a third of what it peaked at in March. Additionally, the frequency of layoffs has decreased since the coronavirus pandemic began. However, the average number of employees let go during each lay off has increased; over half of the ten largest layoffs took place over the past month, with Stitch Fix cutting 1,400, or 18% of its workforce on June 1st. The hardest-hit startups are in transportation, travel, and retail such as Uber and Airbnb. [Read more]
Intel’s “Rock Star” Chip Executive Jim Keller Resigned For Personal Reasons
Renowned chip architect Jim Keller, was announced to resign immediately from Intel on Thursday June 11 for “personal reasons”. Keller joins Intel two years ago as the senior VP of Technology, Systems Architecture and Client Group and general manager of the Silicon Engineering Group. He is known for leading groundbreaking chip designs at Tesla, Apple and AMD. Intel also announced several moves within the engineering leadership team adapting to Keller’s departure. [Read more]
YC CEO, Michael Siebel, Replaces co-founder Alexis Ohanian on Reddit Board
Following the resignation of Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian from the Board in support of the George Floyd protests, Michael Siebel is named his replacement. Known for being CEO of the startup accelerator Y Combinator, which provided early support for Reddit and Twitch.tv, Siebel has also been a diversity activist in the tech space with initiatives such as BlackTech4BlackLives and Black Tech Weekend. Alongside this leadership change, Reddit will change its content policy to crack down harder on hate speech posted on its platform. [Read more]
Ex-VMWare VP Velchamy Sankarlingam Joins Zoom as President of Product and Engineering
Ex-Senior VP of Cloud Services Development and Operations at VMWare Velchamy Sankarlingam will be joining Zoom as President of Product and Engineering on June 12. This talent move is part of Zoom’s plan to expand its engineering team by 500 across its Phoenix and Pittsburgh locations to meet scaling demands accelerated by the pandemic. Sankarlingam’s expertise in scaling up enterprise communication and cloud technology will be leveraged to help meet Zoom’s operational goals. [Read more]
Former Verizon & Hulu Executive Richard Tom Joins WarnerMedia as CTO
To help realize WarnerMedia’s potential to evolve its media business through technology, Richard Tom has been appointed Chief Technology Officer, replacing former CTO Jeremy Legg. Tom will be directing WarnerMedia’s technical and operational side for data strategy, content delivery, broadcast engineering for the newly released HBO Max, and more. Tom previously served as CTO and SVP of Hulu and CTO of Digital Entertainment at Verizon. [Read more]
IBM’s Sumit Gupta Promoted to VP of AI Strategy and CTO
Sumit Gupta, ex-VP of Product, AI, Machine Learning and HPC, Cognitive Systems for IBM has been promoted to VP of AI Strategy and Chief Technology Officer. His previous employment was at NVIDIA as General Manager AI & GPU Accelerator products. In both companies, Gupta developed startup businesses internally to generate more than $500M in revenues each. [Read more]
Mark Minevich Appointed AI Policy Chair For IRCAI
The International Research Center for AI (IRCAI) Under the Auspices of UNESCO has brought on board AI Policy expert Mark Minevich to specialize in answering strategic questions in areas involving business and responsible use of AI. The growing body of research strongly suggests that AI has the potential to reshape the world. Minevich, with his experience as President of Going Global Ventures and AI advisor to such companies as IPSoft and Boston Consulting Group among other things, has significant expertise in assessing and controlling AI’s socio-political impacts on an international scale. [Read More]
Ex-Juul CEO Kevin Burns Joins Digital Pharmacy Startup Alto as President and COO
Alto Pharmacy welcomed Ex-Juul CEO Kevin Burns as its new President and Chief Operating Officer. Burns resigned from Juul in late 2019 amidst government pressures to stop e-cigarette advertising, particularly towards younger audiences. Prior to Juul Burns was President and COO of yogurt maker Chobani. He will now be heading the online prescription drug retail startup that offers same-day drug deliveries as well as manages complementary medication adherence apps. [Read more]
Samsung to promote new research lead, MongoDB appoints new CTO, Healx appoints new CTO, COVID-19 causes loss of jobs for tech startups globally, Whip Media Group Announces MediaLink CEO to join Board of Directors.
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C-suite executives are leading AI projects; Ex-LinkedIn VP joins Databricks; UK-based tech firm Signal AI hires former UN-IPCC comm strategist; Ex-Google SVP founds search engine startup; tech industry voiced concerns about Trump’s Executive Order suspending H-1B visas.
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New startup layoffs have dropped since COVID-19; Jim Keller resigned from Intel; YC CEO is named on Reddit Board; Velchamy Sankarlingam joins Zoom; Former Verizon & Hulu Executive is appointed as CTO in WarnerMedia; and more
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