Akshay Chalana
CEO & Co-Founder at Saphira AI
San Francisco, California, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolAkshay Chalana is a founder-engineer with 11 years of experience building ML-driven systems and safety-focused products, currently CEO and Co-Founder of YC-backed Saphira AI in San Francisco. He blends hands-on software and ML platform experience from Apple and Citadel Securities with deep practical knowledge of functional safety standards and compliance workflows, applying GenAI to accelerate hardware design, HazOps, and FMEA processes. His open-source contributions to ONNX highlight a fluency in ML interoperability—implementing operators, version converters, and backend tests that improve cross-framework compatibility. Prior roles span startups and industry leaders where he shipped firmware, data platforms, and audio deep-learning models, showing an uncommon mix of embedded, backend, and research experience. Known for turning complex regulatory and technical requirements into auditable engineering workflows, he pairs entrepreneurial drive with a pragmatic, safety-first engineering mindset.
11 years of coding experience
13 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor's degree, Computer Science (Data Science), Mathematics (Philosophy), Bachelor's degree, Computer Science (Data Science), Mathematics (Philosophy) at University of WashingtonY Combinator
Spanish, Hindi, English
Stackoverflow
11reputation
5kreached
1answer
0questions
Github Skills (10)
machine-learning10
onnx10
deep-learning9
c-language8
python8
cprogramming-language8
testing7
version-control7
git7
modbus6
Programming languages (10)
Github contributions (5)
onnx/onnx
Jun 2018 - Sep 2018
Open standard for machine learning interoperability
Role in this project:
ML Engineer
ML EngineerContributions:13 commits, 22 PRs, 101 comments in 2 months
Contributions summary:Akshay primarily contributed to the development and maintenance of the ONNX library, focusing on the implementation of operators and version conversions. Their work included bumping the opset version, creating and modifying test cases for various operators like Clip, and developing the version converter. These contributions involved modifying model definitions and backend tests, along with updating operator sets and adapting the codebase for improved compatibility and functionality.
machine-learningdeep-learningdeep-neural-networksneural-networkonnx
FeedingLiberia/feedingliberia.github.io
Feb 2016 - Apr 2021
Contributions:8 pushes, 1 branch in 5 years 2 months
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