Mike Kennewick

Mike Kennewick is an electrical engineer, tech industry veteran and serial entrepreneur. He started his career at Microsoft where he worked with Bill Gates and Steve Balmer to launch Microsoft’s seminal licensing business for MS-DOS and Windows. After Microsoft, Mike founded Saros Corporation and ran it with his co-founder for 10 years. Saros was the inventor and pioneer of a new category of software called enterprise-document-management. Saros’ document management was installed in most of the major law firms in the U.S. as well as in about 200 of the Fortune 1000 companies. Saros was ultimately sold to FileNet Corporation and then FileNet was sold to IBM, where the technology remains in use today.

Mike was also the founder and CEO of Voicebox Corporation. Voicebox was the inventor and pioneer of Voice Assistants and Conversational AI. Voicebox created the first smart-speaker and voice assistant in 2005. The company also became one of the dominant suppliers of voice recognition and natural language understanding in the automotive business with over 20 million cars shipped by companies such as Toyota, Renault, Chrysler, TomTom, Denso, Fujitsu 10, Pioneer, Panasonic and Harman. Voicebox’s mobile and enterprise business shipped over 300 million units with customers such as Samsung, Best Buy, Orange and Bouygues. The automotive business was ultimately sold to Nuance Communications and merged with Nuance’s Automotive business unit. Mike then founded a company called Speak.ai to provide conversational AI at the “edge. Speak.ai’s initial customers included makers of low power CPUs, emerging AI chips, DSPs, micro controllers and SOCs.