Founder
CEO and Associate Founder
Exponentials • Robotics • Artificial Intelligence • Exponential Organizations
Rob is the Global Ambassador and Associate Founder of Singularity University. He brings a unique entrepreneurial and globally-focused approach to growing a non-traditional university as a platform to create a future of abundance where exponential technologies empower us to solve the global grand challenges.
Prior to Singularity, he co-founded Velocity11 in 1999, building automation equipment and robotics for cancer research and drug discovery. After being acquired by Agilent Technologies in 2007, he traded the CEO role for a General Manager role attempting to be a catalyst for change at a big company. He gave up in 2009 to go surfing, then found his true calling and biggest challenge yet with Singularity University. He was recently a director at Harman (HAR), on technology and audit committees. He helped Harman explore options for long-term growth in a rapidly changing automobile industry, ultimately resulting in an ~$8 billion acquisition by Samsung. As their largest acquisition in history, it brings Samsung directly into the automobile and autonomous car market.
Rob is currently on the board of Light & Motion, is a co-founder and director of Alite Designs, is an active angel investor and advisor, and holds degrees in Mechanical, Materials Science, and Manufacturing Engineering from UC Davis and Stanford University.
CEOs today must be the masters of many domains. It’s no longer enough to just know one thing – you need to be a futurist, technologist, innovator, and humanitarian. In this talk, AssociateFounder, Faculty and Global Ambassador of Singularity University, Rob Nail shares a case study on a traditional company navigating an exponential future.