Experience & Background
Babak Hodjat leads Cognizant AI Lab, where a team of researchers and developers advances the state of the art in AI, develops differentiated AI capabilities for Cognizant’s offerings, and leads the company’s AI for good initiatives.
A longtime AI researcher, inventor, and entrepreneur, Babak has spent his career building technologies and companies at the forefront of artificial intelligence. He previously co-founded and served as CEO of Sentient Technologies, where he was responsible for the core technology behind what became the world’s largest distributed AI system. He also founded Sentient Investment Management, the world’s first AI-driven hedge fund.
His entrepreneurial career includes founding and building several Silicon Valley technology companies as a lead inventor and technologist. Before Sentient, he served as Senior Director of Engineering at Sybase iAnywhere, leading mobile solutions engineering. Earlier, as co-founder, CTO, and board member of Dejima Inc., he was the primary inventor of its patented agent-oriented technology for intelligent mobile and enterprise interfaces, technology that helped form the foundation for Apple’s Siri.
With more than 50 published papers and 39 issued U.S. patents, his research spans artificial life, agent-oriented software engineering, distributed artificial intelligence, natural language processing, machine learning, and evolutionary algorithms.
Babak holds a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence from Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan.
Areas of Expertise
- Artificial Intelligence & Agentic AI
- Natural Language Processing & Conversational AI
- Machine Learning & Evolutionary Algorithms
- Distributed AI Systems
- Generative AI & Enterprise AI Transformation
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