About
Engineering leader with 25+ years in software and the last decade in AI. Most recently CTO at ThirdLaw, building runtime AI safety for the enterprise. Founded Nervana's software team and grew it from 10 to 150 engineers across four countries after Intel's acquisition, and founded and sold Luminide.
Strongest as a VP of Engineering — strategy, recruiting, and org-building — and hands-on daily with agentic engineering. Computer Science Ph.D., two patents, and 20+ publications including Flexpoint at NeurIPS.
Experience
- CTO, ThirdLaw 2025–2026Runtime AI safety: observability and governance for LLM and agent behavior in the enterprise.
- VP of Engineering, TensorWave 2024Engineering, recruiting, and datacenter/SaaS operations.
- AI Engineering & Leadership, consulting 2023–2025Advised companies and investors; engagements including DE Shaw and GLG.
- Senior Director, Product, Akridata 2022–2023Integrated Luminide's IDE; led GTM and community (Kaggle, ML Commons).
- Co-founder & CEO, Luminide 2020–2022AI tools for model accuracy and lower training cost; acquired by Akridata.
- Director of AI Software, Intel 2016–2019Grew the team from 10 to 150 across four countries; three AI chip bring-ups; co-developed Flexpoint.
- Director of AI Software, Nervana 2014–2016Founded the software team for the first AI hardware accelerator; acquired by Intel.
Publications & Patents
- Flexpoint: An Adaptive Numerical Format for Efficient Training of Deep Neural Networks — NeurIPS, 2017.
- Dynamic Management of Numerical Representation in a Distributed Matrix Processor Architecture — U.S. Patent 10,552,119.
- Expedited Assessment and Ranking of Model Quality in Machine Learning — U.S. Patent Application 17/560,422.
- Real-time Analytics: Techniques to Analyze and Visualize Streaming Data — Byron Ellis, edited by Luke Hornof. Wiley, 2014.
- Compiling for Template-based Run-time Code Generation — Journal of Functional Programming 13(3), 2003.
Talks
Speaking on engineering leadership and building in the AI era, at SF AI meetups and founder events. Recent topics:
- Building Amazing Engineering Teams (AI-era update)
- Bootstrapping a Startup — the Luminide story
- Company Models — the AI OS for Companies
- Where the High-Potential Startup Areas Are
- The Times They Are AI-Changin' — startup essentials
Contact
SF Bay Area. Email luke@hornof.org, or find me on the profiles linked in the sidebar.