Secondmind Board appoints Gary Brotman as new CEO

New executive appointments and hires strengthen the company’s commercial machine learning and scaleup experience

The Secondmind Board of Directors has appointed Gary Brotman as Chief Executive Officer and Director. Brotman joined the company in October 2019 as VP of Product and has served as Chief Product Officer and co-CEO since January of this year while the search for a permanent CEO was underway. During this period, Brotman was instrumental in aligning the company to focus initially on the automotive sector and helping the industry achieve greater sustainability with its leading machine learning research and technology.

Brotman brings a diverse technology background to the role, having held product and marketing leadership positions at successful startups and established enterprises including Musicmatch and Yahoo! Prior to joining Secondmind, Brotman served as the Head of AI Strategy & Product Planning at Qualcomm, where he spearheaded the development and commercialization of the company’s AI Engine across the Snapdragon Mobile Platform portfolio.

The Board has also appointed Adam Broun as Chairman of the Board. Prior to joining Secondmind, Broun was CEO of Kensho Technologies, a leading provider of next-generation machine learning and analytics to financial institutions. At Kensho, Broun was instrumental in every stage of the company’s growth, from early commercial wins to building a successful, scalable platform and the company’s acquisition by S&P Global in 2018.

The Secondmind executive team has also expanded in depth and breadth, with commercial, scale-up and product strategy experience to complement its strong research credentials.

• Peter Bullivant becomes Chief Financial & Operating Officer as his Chief Financial Officer role at the company is expanded to include company operations, business development and human resources.
• Suraj Nagaraj has joined the company as Vice President of Product. He brings experience in commercialization of competitive AI & ML SaaS products and has held a number of product leadership positions across leading brands, McLaren, Denso, Jaguar Land Rover and General Electric to name a few.
• Carl Edward Rasmussen continues in his role as Chief Scientist and will also serve as Co-Chairman with Broun.

Kevin Dillon, Director on the Secondmind Board and Managing Partner of Secondmind investor Atlantic Bridge, said: “We are bullish about Secondmind’s ability to deliver predictive modeling underpinned by scaled Gaussian Processes and see this as both unique and disruptive in the Automotive sector and beyond. We are excited about the appointments of Gary as CEO and Adam as Chairman of the Board, and are confident that along with Carl and Peter, Secondmind has the world-class executive leadership to match its vision and technology innovation.”

Commenting on his appointment, Gary Brotman, CEO, said: “I’m incredibly excited to have the privilege of leading the exceptionally talented and diverse Secondmind team in this next phase of our business. I’m also grateful for the support of the Secondmind Board over the last several months and the trust they’ve put in me moving forward. We have the right team and the right machine learning technology to help innovators in automotive design cleaner cars and achieve greater sustainability.”