Rakesh is a Partner at SAIC Capital, where he focuses on Deep Tech investments. He invests in AI, sensors, mobility, energy, and batteries. Previously, as Senior Director of Technology, his investment technical diligence and role in the investment decision committee led to multiple successful exits. Preceding that, he built the SAIC US autonomous driving department from scratch to 35+. He led the L4 autonomous driving stack development with computer vision, mapping & localization, motion planning, public road testing, and the deployment of our L4 shuttle on the UC Davis campus.

Prior to joining SAIC, he led teams at Honda Research Institute USA, Inc. in autonomous driving, spoken dialog, and robotics for the ASIMO humanoid robot. He also worked with Schlumberger’s Geometric Modeling software products and managed their offshore software team.

Rakesh holds a Ph.D. from MIT in robotics and a Bachelors from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India.

He is an aspiring bridge player and an avid hiker, climbing Kilimanjaro in September 2024, and Mission Peak over 100 times.