Zavain Dar
Principal, Lux Capital

Website | @zavaindar

Zavain Dar is a principal at Lux Capital. Zavain is driven by smart software, leveraging data and machine intelligence to scale, augment, and balance human intelligence. He invests in companies that are using machine learning and AI to augment or replace physical-world functions, including biology, language, manufacturing, and analysis. He looks for entrepreneurs that can use software and data to hone a philosophical position on where the world is and how to direct it for the better. Zavain has led Lux’s investments in Primer, a machine intelligence startup; Clarifai, which democratizes cutting-edge deep neural networks; Capella, which is developing novel medicines based on computational insight applied to genomic data; Recursion, which uses automation and deep learning to develop drugs for rare diseases; Tempo Automation, which applies software and automation to electronics manufacturing; Rigetti Computing, which is fabricating some of the fastest quantum chips in the world; Visor, which aims to simplify tax preparation; and Blockstack, which builds architectures to decentralize current winner-take-all centralized web components. Previously, Zavain was a founder and computer scientist. At Discovery Engine (acquired by Twitter), he engineered machine learning and AI systems across a proprietary distributed computing framework to build web-scale ranking algorithms. Zavain was also a cofounder of Fountainhop, one of the first hyperlocal social networks. Zavain holds a BS in symbolic systems and an MS in computer science from Stanford, where he was a researcher in Stanford’s AI Lab. He is currently a lecturer at Stanford and has taught quarter-long seminars on cryptocurrencies, artificial intelligence and philosophy, and venture capital.