Vivek Kumar

Technology Leader, Innovator and Angel Investor

Director, Sound Research (Frontier AI) at Google DeepMind. I lead a research team focused on multimodal understanding and generation across audio, speech, and music — including audio-visual editing, source separation, spatial audio, and foundation models.

Prior to joining Google in 2022, I spent over 13 years at Dolby Laboratories, where I founded and led the Audio AI Research team and worked on core codecs including Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, and Dolby Atmos.

Angel Investor | Backed 15+ Startups incl. Jasper AI (Unicorn, 125x) | YC Ecosystem | Early-Stage AI & Hardtech

Evaluating Consumer Hardware Startups

3 things hardware startups should focus on — creating solutions not gadgets, finding unfair advantages, and iterating faster.

4 Steps for Learning Deep Learning

A curated list of courses, tutorials, and resources to go from zero to deep learning practitioner.

Insights from F8 Developer Conference

Key takeaways from Facebook’s F8 conference — Messenger bots, VR with Oculus, and the 10-year roadmap.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things — Summary

Summary of Ben Horowitz’s book on the hard decisions founder-CEOs face — advice on managing tough problems that business schools don’t cover.

Design Thinking and the Art of Innovation

Key takeaways from Stanford’s Design Thinking course — brainstorming techniques, prototyping for empathy, and a tour of IDEO.