AI Platforms & Product Leadership

Vinayak Kulkarni

I build AI platforms that work in the real world—where data is messy, trust matters, and product decisions compound.

My mission is to build intelligent assistance that isn't gated by status or privilege.

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01 Philosophy

How I think

01

Trust unlocks adoption

AI adoption accelerates when people trust the system. I design for trust from day one—through rigorous evaluation, tight feedback loops, and calibrated expectations. The result: systems people genuinely rely on.

02

Designed for real workflows

AI succeeds when it fits naturally into how people already work. I build systems that reduce friction, earn trust over time, and evolve alongside users—meeting them where they are.

03

Platforms multiply impact

I build capabilities that compound. When one platform empowers 10–100 teams to move faster, that's leverage. My question is always: how does this scale across the organization?

04

Shaped by high stakes

Two decades in healthcare and genomics—where precision matters and trust is earned—taught me to prioritize usability, feedback loops, and systems that deliver on their promise.

02 About

I work at the intersection of applied AI, product, and real user workflows—especially when the problem is still forming and trust is everything.

Twenty years in regulated, high-stakes environments—genomics, healthcare, diagnostics. Founding engineer through IPO at Invitae. Privacy-preserving AI at Illumina. Generative AI healthcare agents as a founder. My work lives where cutting-edge AI meets human wellbeing.

I combine GenAI systems thinking with deep regulated-domain experience, product intuition, and builder credibility. That combination is rare.
Scale
20+ years in AI & Biotech
50+ engineers managed
Impact
DNA Platform as a Service
Clinical Diagnostics @Scale
2X Founder
Cradle to Grave Diagnostics
Federated Data Platform
Domains
Healthcare AI, Genomics
Enterprise LLMs, Privacy ML
Community
South Park Commons
Tribe AI
Techbio advisor
03 Capabilities

Where I create leverage

AI Platform Strategy

Turning internal AI capability into leverage—for builders, product teams, and eventually the business. Designing systems that earn trust and evolve with users.

Productizing AI

The hardest part isn't the models—it's the productization and org dynamics. I bridge the gap between AI capability and real user adoption.

High-Stakes Environments

Healthcare, genomics, regulated industries. Building AI systems where failure is expensive taught me to focus on trust, feedback loops, and making capability usable.

Technical Leadership

Building and scaling teams that ship. Helping organizations find big problems worth solving, not just executing on defined roadmaps.

04 Journey

Building through complexity

Let AI Work For You LLC

2020 — Present

Founder — Strategic AI Consulting

Strategic consulting on data, software, and AI in healthcare and diagnostics, partnering with executive teams to design and deploy production AI systems with real user adoption. Select engagements:

Cohere (Aug 2025 — Jan 2026) · MTS, Applied ML — Partnered with enterprise customers to design and prototype solutions using Cohere's foundation models (RAG, fine-tuning, tool use, agents). Ran model evaluations and benchmarks, communicating trade-offs to technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Specie Bio (Aug 2024 — Sep 2025) · Head of AI — Architected and shipped an enterprise-grade generative AI platform enabling researchers to query complex biomedical datasets using natural language. Built a rigorous evaluation and monitoring framework for production LLM systems in high-stakes biomedical workflows.

BioTechne (Aug 2021 — Jan 2025) · Consultant to CTO — Containerized workflows and pipelines to move from on-premises to scalable cloud-based solutions using AWS Batch. Applied AI for improved detection and analysis of cancer markers.

Revelation Health

Jul 2023 — Jan 2025

Co-founder & CTO

Cofounded and raised a $1M pre-seed round to build generative AI agents for health insurance providers and genomic marketplaces to democratize access to personalized health. Built and shipped Nadia, a human-centered AI healthcare navigator supporting oncology patients, clinicians, and families across diagnosis, treatment, and end-of-life care. Deployed an AI-driven patient monitoring system that reduced operational cost from $30/hr to $6/hr with high patient engagement. Learned what it takes to build trust in AI at the hardest edge—direct patient care.

Illumina

Nov 2021 — Jul 2023

Technical Lead, Privacy Preserving AI & Applications

Led Illumina's AI strategy reporting to the CTO, developing tools to broaden access to Illumina's genomic data. Prototyped an industry-first patient-centered AI and data marketplace. Led the design of privacy-preserving AI systems (homomorphic encryption, differential privacy, federated learning) enabling secure analysis of sensitive healthcare data at scale. Partnered with NVIDIA Research, Microsoft Health Futures, Flower.dev, and top cancer hospitals, contributing to DigiCore — the Federated European Cancer Care Initiative. Navigated the intersection of cutting-edge AI and institutional trust.

Invitae

May 2014 — Nov 2021

Founding Engineer → Director R&D → Head of Algorithms → Principal Engineer

Founding engineer through IPO. Scaled from a handful of cancer tests/week to 10,000+/day. Reduced COGS from $5,000 to $300. Developed Invitae's first commercial-grade genetic testing assay, cutting costs by 10X. Created industry-first ML algorithms for rare disease identification, reducing sequencing costs by 50X. Built scalable ML platforms for personalized medicine including the Patient2Pharma trial matcher and a comprehensive genomic diagnostic test handling 20,000 genes per test. Scaled self-serve infrastructure that cut assay development from 6 months to <8 weeks. Learned how to build platforms that let entire organizations move faster.

Agilent Technologies

Oct 2008 — May 2014

R&D Engineering Manager, Software

Led development of Agilent SureDesign — an industry-first scalable workflow-integrated platform for DNA chip design. 20,000+ global users, $15M first-year revenue. Managed 50+ engineers across 3 continents. Led architectural redesign to segment the application into scalable service utilities.

Merck Research Laboratories

Oct 2007 — Sep 2008

Bioinformatics Scientist

Created visualization and analysis tools for target identification in preclinical studies. Won company-wide Innovation Award.

UT Southwestern Medical Center

Aug 2005 — Sep 2007

Research Assistant, Garner Lab

Trained SVM classifiers to annotate disease-causing mutations in the human genome coding region.

05 Connect

I believe GenAI will fundamentally transform how technology reaches end users. I stay at the frontier by building end-to-end solutions with businesses—not just observing or advising.

If you're working on hard problems at the intersection of AI and real-world impact— where capability needs to become adoption, where trust needs to be earned, where the problem is still forming—I'd love to talk.