Amir Husain is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of SparkCognition, a global artificial intelligence (AI) company that builds AI systems to advance the most important interests of society. Amir is considered one of the world's leading influencers in the field of artificial intelligence and is based in Austin, Texas. He is a finalist for the Entrepreneur Of The Year 2018 Award, has been named Austin's Top Technology Entrepreneur of the Year, and received the Austin Under 40 Technology and Science Award.

A native of Pakistan, Husain completed his secondary education at Aitchison College. Husain went on to earn a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the Punjab Institute of Computer Science. While in graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin, Husain developed the ideas that led to his first venture-funded startup, Kurion.

Amir Husain founded his first company, Kurion, in 1998 while still enrolled at UT Austin, and served as its Chief Technology Officer until its acquisition by iSyndicate Corporation in 2000. After Kurion was acquired by iSyndicate, Husain started a systems management company that merged with PC Blade manufacturer ClearCube Technology. Husain was appointed ClearCube’s Chief Technology Officer and later to the Board of Directors of ClearCube’s holding company. In 2009, Husain became CEO of VDIworks, a Cloud Computing and Virtualization software vendor, and grew the company successfully until his departure in early 2013. Husain founded SparkCognition in 2013, following his departure from VDIworks.

Husain is a prolific inventor with 22 U.S. patents awarded and over 40 pending applications.

In 2013, a low-cost computing platform Husain invented was inducted into the collection of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, the world’s largest such institution.

His work has also been published in IEEE conferences and in leading tech journals, including Network World, Computer World, and others.

His companies have won numerous awards, such as the 2015 Austin Chamber of Commerce A-List, the InnovateApp 2014 competition, the VMWORLD Gold award, Network World’s Hottest Products, CRN’s Innovation award, and PC World’s best product award.

Since its founding, SparkCognition has received widespread recognition, including making a top 20 listing on 2017 CNBC Disruptor 50, being named the fastest-growing company in Central Texas by Austin Business Journal in 2017, and ranking on the CB Insights AI 100 list in both 2017 and 2018.

Husain is the author of "The Sentient Machine: The Coming Age of Artificial Intelligence" (2017, Scribner).

Husain served as a founding member of the Board of Advisors for IBM Watson and serves on the Board of Advisors for The University of Texas at Austin Department of Computer Science.

He is also a member of the Center for New American Security Task Force on Artificial Intelligence and National Security and serves as advisor and board member to Makerarm, uStudio, ClearCube Technology, S&BMK Foundation, Alif Laila Children’s Educational Society, and others.