Leadership Team

Sakya is the founder and Chief Executive officer of EdgeCortix. Prior to founding EdgeCortix, Sakya was a Senior Research Scientist and Executive Lead for Embodied Robotics at IBM Research. He has over a decade of experience in cutting edge artificial intelligence (AI) hardware and software research, building teams from the ground up, and creating real-world AI solutions.

Sakya is the inventor of over 20 patents and has published widely on AI and edge computing with over 800 citations.

Sakya holds a PhD from Max Planck Institute, Germany, and a Masters in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Edinburgh.

James (Jim) is EdgeCortix’s Chief Investment & Financial Officer. He brings EdgeCortix over 40 years of experience in vital leadership roles from CEO, COO, and CFO with Fortune 50 global corporations. Jim led business transformation and mergers & acquisitions in five different industries across Asia Pacific, US and Canada.

Previously, Jim served as Managing Director of NBC Universal Japan and prior to that as CFO at Philip Morris International, where he led two key Mergers & Acquisitions deals.

Jim holds a CA degree along with Bachelors in Commerce, Accounting and Law from UBC Canada.

Jeffrey is EdgeCortix’s SVP Business Development and US Operations. Prior to joining EdgeCortix, he brings over three decades of experience in marketing, branding, management, and operations leadership roles with world-class companies while leading them through rapid growth and large-scale transformation.

Previously, Jeffrey led as COO of Determine Inc. (NASDAQ: DTRM) through the eventual acquisition by Corcentric. While serving as COO for Determine, Inc. he was responsible for driving the operational cadence, business planning, and analytics for the global company. Prior to Determine, Inc., Jeffrey was the CMRO at Youbet.com (NASDAQ: UBET) through the eventual acquisition by Churchill Downs Incorp. (NASDAQ: CHDN).

Jeffrey holds a MBA from Emory University and an undergraduate degree with dual major in Computer Science and Sociology from Rutgers University.

Stanley Crow recently retired from Northrop Grumman as CTO and VP Technology, Engineering and Manufacturing for the company’s Defense Systems sector. Previously he was the Chief Executive for Northrop Grumman Japan where he was responsible for leading Northrop Grumman's overall development in Japan. During his tenure, he served in various roles at Northrop Grumman including President, Northrop Grumman International, Inc, as a Director of International Customer Engagement & Strategy and Director of Business Development for Directed Energy.

Prior to joining Northrop Grumman, Mr. Crow served as an Associate Principal at McKinsey and Company, where he helped technology, aerospace and defense clients in the U.S. and U.K. Additionally, he served almost three decades in the United States Air Force, including both active duty and reserve assignments focused on space, intelligence, and advanced capability needs in the IndoPacific. Mr. Crow received a Department of Defense award for anti-terrorism and several awards for leadership and significant contributions to national defense. He will serve as EdgeCortix Defense and Security Sector Advisor.

Jeff is responsible for driving the global EdgeCortix hardware engineering team, with specific focus on product and test engineering, quality assurance and the execution of hardware products from concept through successful production ramp. Previously, Jeff has held numerous senior roles in recent decades at leading hardware acceleration companies, with a focused drive on both growth and profitability. He joined EdgeCortix after 24 years with BittWare, where he was formerly CEO, President, and Chief Technology Officer. In addition to his operational responsibilities, he also managed the transition of BittWare and the previously acquired Nallatech into a unified 'BittWare, a Molex company’.   Prior to Bittware, Jeff was the Founder and CEO of Ixthos, a company which became a leading supplier of advanced DSP hardware, which was subsequently acquired by Curtiss-Wright (NYSE:CW).  Prior to Ixthos, Jeff held positions at Avtec Systems, Booz Allen, and NASA. Jeff holds a Bachelor's in Physics from the University of Maryland and a Masters in Electrical Engineering from The Johns Hopkins University.

Nikolay Nez is EdgeCortix’s Director of Engineering for Accelerator. After joining EdgeCortix, he defined the overall direction to be taken on hardware architecture and software stack, while also working together with the engineers through finer details of it, from numeric algorithms at a high level, down to microarchitecture and compiler optimizations, mentoring team members, along with hands-on design of the low-level components of the microarchitecture himself. Under his leadership at EdgeCortix, he and his team have been named as co-inventors on 10 key patents (5 granted & others patent pending), taped out the first company's SoC at TSMC 12nm process, and developed robust Neural Network Compiler stackable to support a wide range of CNN models implemented in major Machine Learning frameworks.

Nikolay started his career working in the Russian System Software branch of the CPU startup Soft Machines. He has more than 10 years of hands-on industry experience spanning areas of compiler backends, binary translation, fault-tolerant distributed systems, hardware architecture, and technical leadership.

Nikolay received his Bachelor's and Master's education from Computing Systems Design department of Russian State University of Aviation Technology (MATI).

Tada has over 25 years of senior corporate financial management experience with well-respected global entertainment companies such as Universal Pictures, Viacom, Sony Pictures, and most recently as CFO for Warner Bros. Japan. Tada has a BA and an MA from Waseda University in Tokyo. He also holds an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Tabata is a 35+ year veteran of sales and marketing in the semiconductor and EDA/IP industries. Starting his career at Fairchild Semiconductor and later working in sales and sales management at leading companies including: National Semiconductor (now TI), Atmel (now Microchip) and Xilinx (now AMD). Most recently he spent over a decade in the EDA industry, as Director of Sales for Mentor Graphics and Cadence Design Systems Japan, where he expanded sales of EDA software and IP products. Tabata’s broad semiconductor industry experience, and his skill at working with a wide range of customers will support EdgeCortix's aggressive customer growth plans. Tabata holds a BA of Arts degree in Psychology from Keio University.

Jay currently serves as the Director of Engineering for Silicon Design at EdgeCortix, overseeing Verification, Integration, and Validation activities. Since joining EdgeCortix in 2020, Jay has led the development of a comprehensive System-on-Chip (SoC) verification infrastructure. In this role he is responsible for RTL functional and gate-level simulations, synthesis, power analysis, and full verification emulation using Palladium. Jay plays a crucial role in the SoC integration and backend activities, as well as contributing to key design decisions for the company's first ASIC SoC, SAKURA-I. Under his leadership, Jay and his team successfully taped out SAKURA-I, EdgeCortix's debut SoC, using TSMC's 12nm process.

Jay has over a decade of engineering and verification experience in the semiconductor industry. Prior to joining EdgeCortix, he was a Senior ASIC/FPGA Design Verification Engineer at LeapMind, where he led verification development for their AI Accelerator IP. Prior to LeepMind, Jay was a Senior Design Engineer at Renesas through Quest Global Japan, responsible for the verification of R3-Gen Car Modules for the R-Car Gen3 project. Jay started his career at Xilinx in 2012 and during his six-year tenure, he played a critical role in DRAM memory controller verification, and also contributed to multiple tape-outs and global verification projects, earning high performance and ‘X factor’ awards.

Jay received his Master’s degree in VLSI from Manipal University.