Ray Kurzweil is a leading futurist and inventor, famed for his position as the Chief Futurist of Google. A keen inventor, Ray began creating his own companies and products at college – co-founding the Select College Consulting Programme as a Sophomore at MIT. He was also the founder of Kurzweil Computer Products in 1974, developing the first omni-font optical character recognition system and the Kurzweil Reading Machine. With a highly successful career in technology to his name, Ray is now booked as a speaker for corporate events, having previously spoken at TEDx events and for top clients such as UBM Canon, Dolby and iMedia Summits.
After obtaining a BS in Computer Science, Ray developed the Select College Consulting Programme that would ignite his passion for technology and inventing. He then founded Kurzweil Computer Products, which he later sold to major tech company Xerox. He is also the founder of Kurzweil Music Systems, with whom he created the Kurzweil K250 and was later appointed as the Chief Strategy Officer of Kurzweil Music Systems. Ray is also the creator of Kurzweil Applied Intelligence, creating speech recognition systems, Kurzweil Educational Systems, developing systems to aid individuals with disabilities, and the Kurzweil-National Federation of the Blind Reader.
In 2012, Ray was hired to join Google and is now their Chief Futurist. Upon his appointment at Google, Ray was hired to aid in the development of machine learning and language processing products for the company. Having had a huge impact on the technology industry in speech recognition systems and optical character recognition, Ray has been commended with countless awards. He has been the recipient of the Silicon Valley Visionary Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Lifetime Achievement Award, the Lemelson-MIT Prize and the Telluride Tech Festival Award of Technology. He has also been inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and claimed the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.
Named Inventor of the Year and Engineer of the Year, Ray is now a popular feature at corporate events. Having been the recipient of a Technical Grammy for the invention of the Kurzweil K250, Ray is widely regarded as an influential inventor and an authority on technology. Having previously delivered the TED talk Get Ready For Hybrid Thinking, Ray is a seasoned speaker and delivers his messages on artificial intelligence, futurism and technology with ease. Having created many of his own companies and worked for tech giant Google, Ray Kurzweil is guaranteed to leave your audience feeling inspired.
