Leadership
Operators who've sat
in the room, not just the lab.
Velastegui Ventures is led by builders who've been accountable to CEOs and boards for the outcome — across Microsoft, Apple, Google, and other tech companies.
The Team
Founder & CEO
Sophia Velastegui
Sophia leads Velastegui Ventures, advising Fortune 1000 boards and executive teams on right-sized, scalable AI strategy. She spent her career building and shipping AI products at the center of the industry: as Chief AI Technology Officer at Microsoft during the OpenAI and ChatGPT era, as Chief Product Officer at Aptiv steering a multi-billion-dollar self-driving portfolio, and earlier at Google/Alphabet and Apple.
She currently sits on the board of BlackLine and Georgia Tech's President's Board, advises the National Science Foundation on AI, and is active with the National Association of Corporate Directors on AI governance. She has chaired the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on AI and business transformation, and her perspective has been featured by the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Forbes, and TEDx — Business Insider named her one of tech's most powerful female engineers.
Read full bio →Co-Founder & Head of Operations
Nicholas Velastegui
Nicholas brings deep silicon, software and hardware engineering discipline to Velastegui Ventures, with a career spent in design automation and physical design across VLSI, EDA, SoC, and ASIC teams at Intel Corporation and Altera. That hands-on chip-to-system experience grounds the firm's AI strategy work in the physical and engineering realities that make deployments actually ship.
He holds a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.