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2020/12/16 | Time to read: 1 min
Dr. Prasad Akella, founder and chairman of the Drishti board, is creating his third massive market category that uses technology to extend human capabilities. In the 1990s, Prasad led the General Motors team that built the world’s first collaborative robots (“cobots,” projected to be a $12B market by 2025). In the early 2000s, as cofounder of the social networking pioneer Spoke, he envisioned and helped build the first massive social graph — a category now worth trillions. Today, at Drishti, he is working to combine the cognition of AI with the flexibility of humans in factories in the form of AI-powered production. Prasad is based in Mountain View, California.
One of the most bizarre years of my lifetime is finally coming to a close. At Drishti, we saw some of our highest highs yet: securing our Series B funding round, announcing our first public customers, receiving recognitions from NVIDIA and Forbes and hiring the best and brightest minds are a few of the milestones that made 2020 unforgettable.
But the world outside of Drishti ranged from abnormal to tragic. The coronavirus pandemic fundamentally changed the world forever, and the lives lost to COVID-19 can never be replaced. Global civil and political chaos and a U.S. government administration change cap months of economic and policy uncertainty. The manufacturing sector was roiled by shutdowns and labor churn like no other time even as the PMI crashed to 41.5 before soaring to 57.5 most recently. With a vaccine imminent, manufacturers are finally beginning to see normalcy on the horizon.
But what will define “normal” for manufacturing in 2021? In the coming weeks, I’ll be posting a three-part blog series that sheds light on what we can look forward to in 2021 and beyond in a post-COVID-19 world.
We’re all ready to turn the page on 2020. Together, let’s eagerly look to a bright future for the manufacturing sector, the United States and the global community.
