Software engineering firm Ascendion gets new Chief AI Officer

Ascendion, a US-based artificial intelligence (AI)-first software engineering services company, with a strong presence in India, has announced the appointment of Daryush Laqab as Chief AI Officer, effective June 28. He will report to CEO Karthik Krishnamurthy.

Laqab brings in over two decades of experience and will drive innovation and operational excellence for all AI-powered initiatives and technologies for clients.

Throughout his career, Laqab held senior roles in technical engineering and AI product development roles in several world-renowned innovator firms. As the head of engineering and product at JPMorgan Chase & Co., he founded and led the strategy and development of the banking giant's firm-wide AI and machine learning (ML) platform and ecosystem.

In addition, Laqab has led the development of multiple products for Microsoft, Twitter, and Google, where he created Contact Center AI on the Google Cloud Platform and other AI products. Most recently, he served as Director of Product Management for Nvidia's Autonomous Vehicles and AI Infrastructure team. He led tooling, platform engineering, validation, and infrastructure, managing thousands of GPUs for hundreds of engineers and machine learning experts.

Ascendion takes an "all in" strategic business transformation approach with Gen AI. Software engineering clients are offered immediate value from talented developers using their proprietary Ascendion AVA+ platform, which delivers productivity, transparency, quality, and velocity from Gen AI. Innovation is further accelerated by connecting ideal candidates to specific programs with their Metal platform.

The company said in June that it is set to expand its footprint in India by increasing its employee strength in Tamil Nadu from around 500 to around 2,000 people in the next two years. Additionally, its India employee strength will also increase from around 2,000 across six hubs, by adding another 1,000 in the next year, the company said.

In May, the company launched its GenAI Studio in Chennai to gather, collaborate, and build the future. This state-of-the-art studio and engineering workspace embodies the growing demand for Generative AI and continues to advance Ascendion’s leadership in the GenAI landscape.

The Chennai studio, part of Ascendion’s six major innovation hubs in India and Monterrey, Mexico, fosters creativity, learning, and collaboration. This new space will amplify client impact and drive growth by leveraging the high-quality GenAI talent in the Chennai area.

Krishnamurthy said, "Today, business and technology leaders in every sector must now resolve challenges related to trust, velocity, and capital needed for the next wave of innovation. We're already taking GenAI the last mile for clients with our people and our platforms, and now Laqab will help us deliver even more value, innovation, and better technology — key elements of our 'Engineering to the Power of AI.'"

"The ecosystem of powerful processors, cloud platforms, connectivity, and Gen AI-based tools and models like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Mistral, and others are maturing rapidly. This new 'stack' is poised to disrupt nearly every industry, but Gen AI needs to be taken the last mile to change how we work," said Laqab.

"This vision has captured all our imaginations, but to make the future of work a reality, we need to evolve how data is used and how software is engineered. With thousands of Gen AI-trained engineers, powerful data capabilities, and a platform-first strategy, Ascendion is uniquely positioned to re-imagine how work gets done using modern AI technology.”