We Clear the AI Hurdles So You Don't Have To.

Today’s artificial intelligence solutions tend to be specialized in specific applications and functions, and rely on maintenance by a select few developers. They are talent-intensive, expensive, difficult to reproduce, and overall unsustainable. As a result, AI currently remains inaccessible to most organizations.

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Founded by Scientists & Professors at Carnegie Mellon University.

Petuum was founded by scientists and professors from Carnegie Mellon University, including Dr. Eric Xing, who is ranked the top CS/AI researcher in the world.

Our vision is to unlock the future of AI for organizations everywhere.

Who We Are

With our research, development, and technical strength, we solve problems at the forefront of machine learning, distributed systems, and human-computer interaction.

Eric Xing, Ph.D
Co-Founder, Executive Chairman & Chief Scientist
Eric Xing, Ph.D
Eric P. Xing is the Founder, Executive Chairman, and Chief Scientist of Petuum Inc., and a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He completed his undergraduate study at Tsinghua University, and holds a PhD in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the State University of New Jersey, and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. His main research interests are the development of machine learning and statistical methodology, and large-scale computational system and architectures, for solving problems involving automated learning, reasoning, and decision-making in high-dimensional, multimodal, and dynamic possible worlds in artificial, biological, and social systems.

Most recently Prof. Xing has been appointed the Founding President of the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) in the UAE. MBZUAI is the world’s first graduate-level, research-based AI university. Prof. Xing also currently serves or has served in the following roles: associate editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association (JASA), Annals of Applied Statistics (AOAS), IEEE Journal of Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI) and the PLoS Journal of Computational Biology; action editor of the Machine Learning Journal (MLJ) and Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR); member of the United States Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Information Science and Technology (ISAT) advisory group.

He is a recipient of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Career Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in Computer Science, the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award, the IBM Open Collaborative Research Faculty Award, as well as several best paper awards. Prof Xing is a board member of the International Machine Learning Society; he has served as the Program Chair (2014) and General Chair (2019) of the International Conference of Machine Learning (ICML); he is also the Associate Department Head of the Machine Learning Department, founding director of the Center for Machine Learning and Health at Carnegie Mellon University; he is a Fellow of the Association of Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), and an IEEE Fellow.

According to CSRankings: Computer Science Rankings , Professor Xing currently ranks as one of the top computer science (CS) professors worldwide, whose papers (in the most selective CS conferences of all disciplines) collectively have the highest (weighted) acceptance among all computer scientists in the US and global universities during 2005-2020.
Qirong Ho, Ph.D
Co-Founder, Chief Technology Officer
Qirong Ho, Ph.D
Qirong is Co-Founder and CTO at Petuum. He is also a faculty member in the Machine Learning department at the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), as well as a Technical Committee member in the Composable, Automatic and Scalable ML (CASL) open-source consortium (https://casl-project.ai).

In his research, Qirong has authored dozens of publications (with thousands of citations) and multiple US patents in the areas of distributed deep learning and machine learning, AI operating systems, and elastic management of machine learning computing. His Ph.D. thesis at Carnegie Mellon University received the 2015 SIGKDD Dissertation Award (Runner-up).
Liz Yi
Co-Founder, Chief Corporate Development Officer
Liz Yi
Liz Yi is Co-founder and Chief Corporate Development Officer at Petuum. Liz has been serving various roles at Petuum for fundraising, finance, communication, operations, etc. She also oversees business and operations in China and Japan after the initial setup. Prior to Petuum, Liz was Vice President of Tsinghua Education Foundation N.A. in the Bay Area, where she led fundraising and grant activities within the organization. Liz worked for Hina Group, a then investment banking startup focusing on cross border transactions as Director of Business Development. She was also a Venture Partner of Shanghai Pudong Science and Technology Investment Co. Liz earned her BS in Material Science and Engineering from Tsinghua University.

Aurick Qiao, Ph.D
Chief Executive Officer
Aurick Qiao Ph.D
Aurick is our Chief Executive Officer here at Petuum. He completed his Ph.D. work at the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University, where he researched resource adaptability and elasticity for distributed machine learning systems. Before Petuum and CMU, Aurick studied computer science and combinatorics and optimization at the University of Waterloo, where he also researched multi-pivot quicksort. He has also been successful in competitive programming.
Eric Xing, Ph.D
Co-Founder, Executive Chairman & Chief Scientist
Eric Xing, Ph.D
Eric P. Xing is the Founder, Executive Chairman, and Chief Scientist of Petuum Inc., and a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He completed his undergraduate study at Tsinghua University, and holds a PhD in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the State University of New Jersey, and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. His main research interests are the development of machine learning and statistical methodology, and large-scale computational system and architectures, for solving problems involving automated learning, reasoning, and decision-making in high-dimensional, multimodal, and dynamic possible worlds in artificial, biological, and social systems.

Most recently Prof. Xing has been appointed the Founding President of the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) in the UAE. MBZUAI is the world’s first graduate-level, research-based AI university. Prof. Xing also currently serves or has served in the following roles: associate editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association (JASA), Annals of Applied Statistics (AOAS), IEEE Journal of Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI) and the PLoS Journal of Computational Biology; action editor of the Machine Learning Journal (MLJ) and Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR); member of the United States Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Information Science and Technology (ISAT) advisory group.

He is a recipient of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Career Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in Computer Science, the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award, the IBM Open Collaborative Research Faculty Award, as well as several best paper awards. Prof Xing is a board member of the International Machine Learning Society; he has served as the Program Chair (2014) and General Chair (2019) of the International Conference of Machine Learning (ICML); he is also the Associate Department Head of the Machine Learning Department, founding director of the Center for Machine Learning and Health at Carnegie Mellon University; he is a Fellow of the Association of Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), and an IEEE Fellow.

According to CSRankings: Computer Science Rankings , Professor Xing currently ranks as one of the top computer science (CS) professors worldwide, whose papers (in the most selective CS conferences of all disciplines) collectively have the highest (weighted) acceptance among all computer scientists in the US and global universities during 2005-2020.
Qirong Ho, Ph.D
Co-Founder, Chief Technology Officer
Qirong Ho, Ph.D
Qirong is Co-Founder and CTO at Petuum. He is also a faculty member in the Machine Learning department at the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), as well as a Technical Committee member in the Composable, Automatic and Scalable ML (CASL) open-source consortium (https://casl-project.ai).

In his research, Qirong has authored dozens of publications (with thousands of citations) and multiple US patents in the areas of distributed deep learning and machine learning, AI operating systems, and elastic management of machine learning computing. His Ph.D. thesis at Carnegie Mellon University received the 2015 SIGKDD Dissertation Award (Runner-up).
Liz Yi
Co-Founder, Chief Corporate Development Officer
Liz Yi
Liz Yi is Co-founder and Chief Corporate Development Officer at Petuum. Liz has been serving various roles at Petuum for fundraising, finance, communication, operations, etc. She also oversees business and operations in China and Japan after the initial setup. Prior to Petuum, Liz was Vice President of Tsinghua Education Foundation N.A. in the Bay Area, where she led fundraising and grant activities within the organization. Liz worked for Hina Group, a then investment banking startup focusing on cross border transactions as Director of Business Development. She was also a Venture Partner of Shanghai Pudong Science and Technology Investment Co. Liz earned her BS in Material Science and Engineering from Tsinghua University.
Hector Liu, Ph.D
Head of Engineering
Hector Liu Ph.D

Zhengzhong (Hector) Liu is the Head of Engineering at Petuum, founding member and committee of the CASL Open-Source Consortium.

Hector has conducted research in the field of Natural Language Processing for over a decade. He has a board range of research interests, including Information Extraction, Information Retrieval, Core NLP and Computational Linguistics. He published more than 30 papers in renowned venues, and received outstanding paper award in ACL 2016 and ACL Best System Demonstration Nomination at ACL 2019.

Hector is a fan of open source. He participated in the development of DBPedia, and has led the development of several open-sourced NLP project, including Texar, Forte and Stave. Some of the projects are selected to join communities like the PyTorch ecosystem.

Personally, Hector loves cooking and photography, but also would like to have robots to do that for him.
Willie Neiswanger, Ph.D
Head of Research
Hector Liu Ph.D

Zhengzhong (Hector) Liu is the Head of Engineering at Petuum, founding member and committee of the CASL Open-Source Consortium.

Hector has conducted research in the field of Natural Language Processing for over a decade. He has a board range of research interests, including Information Extraction, Information Retrieval, Core NLP and Computational Linguistics. He published more than 30 papers in renowned venues, and received outstanding paper award in ACL 2016 and ACL Best System Demonstration Nomination at ACL 2019.

Hector is a fan of open source. He participated in the development of DBPedia, and has led the development of several open-sourced NLP project, including Texar, Forte and Stave. Some of the projects are selected to join communities like the PyTorch ecosystem.

Personally, Hector loves cooking and photography, but also would like to have robots to do that for him.
Mark Schulze
Executive Advisor
Mark Schulze MBA
Mark serves as a Strategic Advisor to venture-backed, emerging tech companies with 20+ years of CRO/CEO experience. He is a commercial leader with a proven record of building category-defining emerging tech and B2B SaaS companies. He's designed & executed go-to-market strategies, built & managed multi-disciplinary operational teams, and helped raise multiple rounds of venture funding. He holds a B.S. in Applied Economics from University of Massachusetts and M.B.A. from Babson College.
Alex Liang
Executive Advisor
Alex Liang
Alex Liang is currently a Partner at Oriza Ventures. Prior to joining Oriza, Alex was a Venture Partner at SAIF Partners, heading US investment activities. He also founded & served as CEO of PICA, one of the earliest mobile Internet messaging companies in China. Additionally, he has served as VP of Asia Netcom, heading strategies for its pan-Asia data network services, as well as VP of 21vianet, China’s leading Internet Data Center company.