- CEO and cofounder, Unconventional AI1
Naveen Rao is the CEO and cofounder of Unconventional AI, a company rethinking the foundations of computing with the aim of bringing biology-scale efficiency to AI. Unconventional AI's author page says Rao founded two earlier AI startups: Nervana Systems, which was acquired by Intel, and MosaicML, which was acquired by Databricks. Databricks' July 2023 release on completing the MosaicML acquisition quotes Rao as MosaicML's co-founder and CEO, and a June 2024 Databricks release names Rao as Vice President of AI at Databricks. Rao is one of six bylined authors of Databricks' March 2024 post announcing DBRX, a mixture-of-experts language model.12345
At a glance
- Current role
- CEO and cofounder
- Company
- Unconventional AI
- Sector
- Company
- Work listed
- 1
- Sources cited
- 7
- Profile reviewed
Career
Rao's background bridges neuroscience and computing; Unconventional AI's author page notes a PhD in neuroscience from Brown University. Rao founded two AI startups: Nervana Systems, acquired by Intel, and MosaicML, which Rao co-founded and which Databricks acquired.13
When Databricks completed its acquisition of MosaicML in July 2023, it quoted Rao as MosaicML's co-founder and CEO. Rao then served as Vice President of AI at Databricks, where Rao was one of the bylined authors of the March 2024 announcement of DBRX, an open mixture-of-experts language model.345
Unconventional AI
Rao is cofounder and CEO of Unconventional AI, which Rao introduced in December 2025. The company aims to build a new physical substrate for AI: silicon circuits whose own non-linear dynamics carry out neural-network computation, in pursuit of what it calls biology-scale energy efficiency.62
In an April 2026 essay, Rao argued for neural co-evolution, the co-design of AI hardware and software rather than treating them as separate disciplines, and discussed Nervana's 2014 architecture for distributed matrix multiplication as one earlier example. The company's research posts since then include Un-0, an image generator built on a simulated system of coupled oscillators.72
Work and contributions
Timeline
- Databricks completed its acquisition of MosaicML, which Rao had co-founded and led as CEO.3
- Co-authored the Databricks announcement of the DBRX open language model.5
- Quoted as Vice President of AI at Databricks in the launch of Shutterstock ImageAI.4
- Introduced Unconventional AI as its cofounder and CEO.6
- Published an essay on neural co-evolution of AI hardware and software on the Unconventional AI blog.7
Other documented roles
Roles the sources document that are not confirmed as current.
- Vice President of AI, Databricks4
- Co-Founder and CEO, MosaicML31
Where they work
- Unconventional AI 2 people in the wiki
Related people
- Michael CarbinAlso at Unconventional AI
- Clément FarabetLanguage models · Training systems
- Barret ZophLanguage models · Training systems
- Tri DaoTraining systems · Language models
- Sami JaghouarTraining systems · Language models
- David D. CoxLanguage models · Training systems
- Jeff DeanTraining systems · Language models
- Edward BeechingLanguage models · Training systems
- Ce ZhangTraining systems · Language models
- Kunle OlukotunChips and hardware · Training systems
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References
7 sources · profile reviewed Oct 21, 2026 · data updated Oct 21, 2026
- Naveen Rao — Unconventional AI author page
- Unconventional AI — homepage
- Databricks Completes Acquisition of MosaicML (press release)
- Introducing Shutterstock ImageAI, Powered by Databricks: An Image Generation Model Built for the Enterprise (press release)
- Announcing DBRX: A new standard for efficient open source LLMs
- Introducing Unconventional AI
- Neural co-evolution, the inevitability of hardware and software co-evolution for AI