In this episode of Telekinesis, data-to-data conversations, we welcome Kinetica Co-Founder and CTO Nima Negahban!
Nima is the original developer and software architect of the Kinetica platform. Leveraging his unique insight into data processing, he established the core vision of the Kinetica platform and leads Kinetica’s technical strategy and roadmap development while also managing the engineering team.
We zero in on the genesis story of Kinetica, which hearkens back to Nima’s days as a Wall Street trader where, driven by the climbing cost of running AWS instances to power trading algorithms, he started toying around with GPUs in his apartment (which, conveniently, didn't charge tenants for electricity). That’s when he began to realize the value GPUs could bring to analytics.
Fast-forward to Nima burning out on the trading lifestyle: He reconnects with college friend and Kinetica co-founder and president Amit Vij, who had already secured a government contract for geospatial consulting. This led to the combination of Amit's geospatial application and Nima’s GPUs to power advanced analytics, and eventually, the development of the Kinetica insight engine we know today!
Beyond the genesis of Kinetica, we discuss a variety of topics surrounding the big data analytics market, Kinetica product features, and most importantly, the reality of hair loss as we get older.
You can check out Nima's LinkedIn here, follow him on twitter here, and read his most recently published article on how to Supercharge IoT Analytics with GPUs TechTarget here.