William Falcon
Unicorn founderFounder at Lightning AI
New York, New York, United States
FoundedLightning AI$2.5B
About
William Falcon is the founder and CEO of Lightning AI and the creator of PyTorch Lightning, an open-source project that has surpassed 380 million downloads. He began his career as a U.S. Navy officer in the SEAL training pipeline before leaving the military due to a training injury, and later co-founded and sold an AI fintech company. He developed PyTorch Lightning during his PhD at NYU, where he studied under Kyunghyun Cho and Yann LeCun with support from the NSF and Google DeepMind and conducted research at Facebook AI Research.
Founder at Lightning AI
Intro paths
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In turn, William can intro founders to Lightning AI's investors below.
Lightning AI's investors · 10
Cisco InvestmentsSan Jose · since 2025Coatue ManagementNew York · $1M – $20M checks · since 2025Corazon CapitalChicago · $150K – $500K checks · since 2026Index VenturesSan Francisco · $540K – $10.8M checks · since 2025K5 GlobalSan Francisco · $1M – $3M checks · since 2025Mantis CapitalSanta Monica · $100K – $1M checks · since 2025NVIDIASanta Clara · since 2025Sherpalo VenturesMenlo Park · since 2025SV AngelSan Francisco · since 2025Zero Prime VenturesSan Francisco · $500K – $1.5M checks · since 2025
Experience
- Lightning AIFounder, CEOcurrent2019 — presentNew York City Metropolitan Area
- Global AI Frontier LabAdvisory Council Membercurrent2026 — present
- NYU Center for Data SciencePhD Student, Deep learning (CILVR lab) (on leave)2018 — 2023New York City Metropolitan Area
- Facebook AIFacebook AI Research (FAIR) - Research Scientist intern2019New York City Metropolitan Area
- CommonBond.coNextGenVest (acquired by Commonbond) - Co-founder , CTO2016 — 2018New York City Metropolitan Area
- Columbia UniversityDeep Learning Researcher - Liam Paninski lab2016 — 2018New York City Metropolitan Area
- Goldman SachsSoftware Engineer - Marquee Strategy Studio2015 — 2016New York City Metropolitan Area
- Freelance iOS DeveloperFounding PM & iOS Lead (7 products launched)2013 — 2015New York City Metropolitan Area
- Merrill LynchInternational Financial advisor2011 — 2013San Diego, CA
- Naval Special Warfare CommandSpecial Reconnaissance Team 1 (SRT-1) - temporary assignment (LTJG)2010 — 2011Coronado, California, United States
- Naval Special Warfare CommandNaval officer - BUD/S candidate (Ensign)2008 — 2010Coronado, California, USA
Skills & more
Deep Learning7User Experience5Machine Learning7NLP2iOS7Python7Objective-C7Swift1
Languages Arabic · Spanish
- Series 66 — FINRA
- Series 3 — FINRA
- Series 7 — FINRA
- CIFAR Deep Learning and Reinforcement Learning Summer School — CIFAR
- Deep Reinforcement Learning Bootcamp — UC Berkeley College of Engineering
From William's professional profile.
Frequently asked questions
- Who is William Falcon?
- William Falcon is the founder and CEO of Lightning AI and the creator of PyTorch Lightning, an open-source project that has surpassed 380 million downloads. He began his career as a U.S. Navy officer in the SEAL training pipeline before leaving the military due to a training injury, and later co-founded and sold an AI fintech company. He developed PyTorch Lightning during his PhD at NYU, where he studied under Kyunghyun Cho and Yann LeCun with support from the NSF and Google DeepMind and conducted research at Facebook AI Research.
- Where does William Falcon work?
- William Falcon is Founder of Lightning AI.
- What companies did William Falcon found?
- William Falcon founded Lightning AI.
- Where did William Falcon go to school?
- William Falcon studied at New York University (Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Artificial Intelligence); Columbia University (Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Statistics).
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Shared employers
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