Towaki Takikawa

We’re about to simp for Towaki Takikawa – dude’s a total beast in the AI and startup world. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Outerport, a fresh YC S24 baby, and that company is doing some wild shit with diagrams, drawings, and docs – making them totally queryable and useful for AI and LLMs. Basically, he’s building tools to turn messy visual stuff into clean, precise data that AI can actually understand and act on. No cap, that’s the future of how we’ll work with visuals and info.

But here’s the kicker – Towaki didn’t just jump into this new wave blindly. He’s got serious creds. Before Outerport, he was a research scientist at NVIDIA, working on some advanced systems for machine learning, generative AI, graphics, compression, neural graphics – the whole shebang. Dude’s published in top conferences, widely cited in ML, graphics, and vision. That’s not just some random guy; he’s legit deep tech and research-focused.

And get this – he was also a PhD student at the University of Toronto, on leave now, but his research was supported by the Royal Bank of Canada’s Borealis AI Fellowship. His interests? Compression, neural data structures, foundation models, immersive media – basically, the cutting edge of how we handle media and AI.

So, what’s his story? Towaki’s process screams passion for pushing tech boundaries. He’s got that combo of deep research chops and real-world startup hustle. He’s always been about making complex AI systems smarter and more useful, and now he’s channeling that into Outerport. The company’s all about transforming how visual and textual info gets processed by AI, making enterprise search and AI reasoning way more fast. The kind of stuff that can totally change industries.

What does this tell us about him? Man, he’s driven by curiosity and a real desire to solve big problems. He’s all about having an effect, not just chasing scientific fame – he wants to build stuff that actually changes how people work and interact with AI. Starting Outerport? That’s him jumping into the deep end, taking everything he’s learned from research and pushing it straight into the real world.

In short, Towaki is that rare mix of a hardcore researcher and a startup founder who’s got the vision to turn complex tech into practical tools that matter. He’s the real deal, someone to watch as AI keeps changing.