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Evangelos Simoudis, PhD

Evangelos has been working in Silicon Valley on AI for over 30 years as a VC, board member, entrepreneur, corporate executive, and technologist. His firm Synapse Partners, which he co-founded in 2016, invests in early-stage startups developing enterprise AI applications and advises global corporations on AI and big data strategies, new mobility, and startup-driven corporate innovation.

Synapse Partners
Founder/Managing Director

Evangelos is the author of the books The Big Data Opportunity in Our Driverless Future and Transportation Transformation. His new book The Flagship Experience: How AI and Software-Defined Vehicles Will Revolutionize the Automotive Customer Experience will be published in December 2023. As a recognized thought leader on big data/AI, new mobility, and corporate innovation, he speaks globally on these topics.

His investment career started in 2000 at Apax Partners where he was a Partner and continued at Trident Capital as a Senior Managing Director. Successfully exited investments include Amobee (acquired by Tremor International), Understand.ai (acquired by dSPACE), X15 (acquired by FireEye), Brightroll (acquired by Yahoo!), Bristol Technology (acquired by Hewlett-Packard), Composite Software (acquired by Cisco), Confluent Software (acquired by Oracle Corporation), Exelate (acquired by Nielsen), and Princeton Softech (acquired by IBM).

Prior to his investing and advisory career, Evangelos had a 20-year career in high technology. He has managed research and engineering groups developing enterprise AI systems and applications. As an IBM executive, he led the worldwide division providing business intelligence and machine learning solutions to the corporation’s largest customers across several industries including financial services, telco, retail, consumer packaged goods, and automotive. He has also served as the CEO of two successfully exited startups that provided AI solutions to enterprises in the financial services industry.

Evangelos is a member of Caltech’s Advisory Board, the Advisory Board of Brandeis International School of Business, the Advisory Board of C2SMART, the Advisory Board of New York’s Center for Urban Science and Progress, and the Advisory Board of Securing America’s Future Energy.

He earned a Ph.D. in computer science from Brandeis University in the area of machine learning and large databases, and a BS in electrical engineering from Caltech.