AXL appoints Toronto AI Faculty Fellows to drive ventures

AXL has named nine University of Toronto professors as its first cohort of Faculty Fellows, adding senior research experience from Nvidia, Samsung, Adobe and the University Health Network to its advisory group for AI venture creation.

The Fellows programme formalises access to academic and industry expertise for teams building new companies around applied AI research. Their work spans areas including computer vision, machine learning and computational health.

The Faculty Fellows are Alec Jacobson, a Senior Research Scientist at Adobe and Associate Professor in the University of Toronto's Department of Computer Science; Alex Mariakakis, an Assistant Professor in the same department and lead for the Computational Health and Interaction Lab; and David Lindell, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science.

Also in the cohort are Gennady Pekhimenko, a Senior Director of AI Software at Nvidia and an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto; Michael Brudno, Chief Data Scientist at the University Health Network and Professor in the Department of Computer Science; Nandita Vijaykumar, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science who previously worked at Intel Labs and AMD; Sven Dickinson, a professor in the Department of Computer Science and former lead of Samsung Toronto's AI Research Centre; Steve Engels, a professor in the Department of Computer Science; and Steve Easterbrook, Former Lead Scientist at NASA and Professor at U of T.

Based in Toronto, AXL describes itself as a venture studio that turns applied AI research into new businesses. The Fellows will work alongside its existing scientific advisers and founding team, which includes people with backgrounds at Autodesk, Microsoft, Meta, Nortel and Telus.

Industry links

Several Fellows have experience at large technology companies and research groups, a mix that has become common as AI researchers move between academia and industry. AXL said that blend is important for venture creation, particularly as AI systems move from research prototypes to deployed products.

Pekhimenko is among the best-known industry figures in the cohort. He became a Senior Director of AI Software at Nvidia after the chipmaker acquired his company, CentML, in 2025. CentML raised more than USD $30 million and worked on reducing deployment costs and improving the performance of machine learning models, AXL said. Pekhimenko has also worked at Microsoft and is a faculty member at the Vector Institute.

The Fellows will advise and mentor founders across AXL's portfolio ventures and corporate partners. AXL expects them to support early technical review and assess research advantages that could underpin new products.

The group will also provide input on issues that often emerge when AI projects move beyond pilots, including performance, cost and reliability in production. Their work is expected to span venture creation from evaluating technical foundations to considering safety and responsibility in product development.

Canada's position

Canada has a long-standing reputation in AI research, with Toronto and Montreal recognised as key centres. In recent years, competition for researchers and commercialisation has intensified as large technology companies and well-funded startups recruit globally. Venture studios and accelerators have also sought closer ties with universities to create repeatable pathways from research to commercial ventures.

AXL said deep scientific input has become a differentiator in today's AI market. It expects the next wave of AI companies to depend increasingly on researchers who understand the limits of current methods and what is realistic to deploy at scale.

"Beyond capital and ambition, building great AI companies requires scientific credibility. These Fellows bring the kind of deep, hard-won expertise that helps industries get ahead of AI advancements to solve their problems," said Daniel Wigdor, Co-Founder and CEO of AXL. "They've spent years at the frontier of AI research; they know what's real, what's scalable, and what's ready to become a high-growth company."

Founding team

AXL's leadership team blends academic research and product development backgrounds. Wigdor previously led the design of Microsoft's Surface technology and served as Director of Meta's Reality Labs in Toronto. AXL said he holds more than 60 patents across AI systems, sensing technologies and manufacturing methods.

Tovi Grossman, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist, previously worked at Autodesk as a Distinguished Research Scientist, where he led scientific advisory and technology transfer work. AXL said Grossman holds more than 100 patents in human-computer interaction and that his research has influenced technologies used in commercial products.

The founding team also includes Ray Sharma, Founder of Extreme Venture Partners; David Sharma, former President of Telus Enterprise & Partner Solutions; and Aniket Patel, founder of driving routes app Sunday Drive. AXL said it built the studio on the idea that closer industry-academic collaboration creates stronger foundations for AI ventures.

Pekhimenko said the group's experience with infrastructure and deployment could shape decisions made early in a startup's life. "Building an AI model is only the first step. The real challenge begins when companies try to deploy and scale those systems in production, where performance, cost, and reliability quickly become limiting factors. I've spent my career working on the infrastructure that makes large-scale AI practical. With AXL, the opportunity is to help founders make those technical decisions earlier, before architecture choices are locked in and become expensive to reverse," said Pekhimenko.