Tanuj Thapliyal

Tanuj Thapliyal is the Chief AI Officer and Chairman at TechTorch. Prior, Tanuj co-founded Spot AI,, where he was the CEO, Chief Architect, and most recently Executive Chairman. Spot AI makes AI camera systems for businesses. Tanuj scaled Spot AI from inception to ~1,000+ customers and over $100m of raised capital. Spot AI helps everyday workplaces — our factories, car washes, retailers, schools, and more — to leverage AI on cameras to improve operations, safety, and security.

Tanuj attended graduate school at Stanford where he got his Masters in Electrical Engineering (AI focus) and MBA concurrently. During graduate school, Tanuj did early research on AI agents (with OpenAI Gym + Universe), computer vision, and natural language processing technologies. He also co-founded Mellow Research which helped software developers make their code energy efficient. Mellow was bootstrapped, profitable, and deployed into Google’s datacenters.

Tanuj’s career started at startup Meraki, a cloud networking pioneer, where he led numerous products’ development from concept to launch as an early engineer. The company was acquired by Cisco for $1.2b during his tenure. He obtained his BS in Electrical Engineering from UCLA where he graduated summa cum laude.

In his spare time, Tanuj invests in the next generation of entrepreneurs. He enjoys reading, hiking, and spending time with his wife + puppy in California.