Chris Nicholson (entrepreneur)

Chris Nicholson (born September 15, 1975) is an American entrepreneur and writer. He is the co-founder and CEO of the artificial intelligence/deep learning company Pathmind.[1][2][3]

Chris V. Nicholson
Born
Christian V. Nicholson

(1975-09-15) September 15, 1975
Billings, Montana
NationalityAmerican
Alma materDeep Springs College
Occupationentrepreneur
Known forPathmind, FutureAdvisor
TitleCEO of Pathmind
WebsitePathmind web site

Career

Nicholson served as head of recruiting for almost two years at the Sequoia Capital-backed startup, FutureAdvisor. FutureAdvisor is a robo-advisor that was acquired by BlackRock for a reported $150 million to $200 million in 2015.[4][5]

Nicholson co-founded Skymind in late 2014. Skymind was admitted to Y Combinator's Winter 2016 batch and raised a seed round later that year from investors such as Tencent, Ron Conway's SV Angel, Ray Lane's Greatpoint Ventures, Google's Amit Singhal and Krishna Bharat, Joe Montana's Liquid2 Ventures and Muse's Matthew Bellamy.[6][7][8] Skymind later renamed itself to become Pathmind.

Early life and education

A fourth-generation Montanan, Nicholson was born in Billings, Montana and grew up in Helena, Montana, where he attended Helena High School.

Nicholson attended Deep Springs College, the all-male, tuition-free school near Bishop, California where students govern themselves, select each incoming cohort and hire and fire the faculty. He graduated in economics from the American University of Paris, studied Islamism with Gilles Kepel at Sciences-Po, and micro-finance with Muhammad Yunus of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. He is an Eagle Scout.

Teaching and speaking

Nicholson is frequently quoted and speaks publicly on such topics as artificial intelligence, deep learning, machine learning trends in technology, and public relations.[9] [10]

Of Elon Musk's plans to mitigate the risk of SuperIntelligence, Wired quoted him as saying "Thinking about AI is the cocaine of technologists: it makes us excited, and needlessly paranoid."

References
  1. Mitchell, Russ. "Chris Nicholson traveled a meandering path from Big Sky Country to CEO of AI start-up Skymind". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 8, 2018.
  2. Motley, Josiah (October 15, 2016). "Interview with the man who's bringing scalable, deep learning to businesses". The Next Web. Retrieved January 5, 2017.
  3. King, Rachael. "Orange Tests Deep-Learning Software to Identify Fraud". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved January 5, 2017.
  4. Foley, Stephen. "BlackRock buys 'robo-adviser' to woo millennials". The Financial Times. Retrieved January 5, 2017.
  5. "Bankrate Contributing Reporter bio". Bankrate. Retrieved January 5, 2017.
  6. Dwoskin, Elizabeth. "China is flooding Silicon Valley with cash. Here's what can go wrong". Washington Post. Retrieved January 5, 2017.
  7. Constine, Josh. "The top 7 startups from Y Combinator Winter '16 Demo Day 1". TechCrunch. Retrieved January 5, 2017.
  8. Mannes, John. "Skymind raises $3M to bring its Java deep-learning library to the masses". TechCrunch. Retrieved January 5, 2017.
  9. "AI Disruption: Market Opportunities & Threats". AI World Expo. Retrieved January 5, 2017.
  10. Motley, Josiah (December 26, 2016). "We chat with deep learning company, Skymind, about the future of AI". The Next Web. Retrieved January 5, 2017.
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