Builder.ai Strengthens Leadership with Craig Saunders from Amazon as New Vice President of Artificial Intelligence
Builder.ai, the AI-powered composable software platform that allows every business and entrepreneur to become digitally powered, is excited to announce the appointment of Craig Saunders as Vice President of Artificial Intelligence. Craig Saunders, a powerhouse in the AI industry, joins Builder.ai from Amazon, where he spent seven transformative years within the Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) organisation.
During his tenure at Amazon, Craig made a significant impact by pioneering technologies for Alexa. He led research and engineering teams building foundational Knowledge Graphs for General Q&A on Alexa, established partnerships with leading universities, and his teams launched challenges within the academic community such as FEVER (Fact Extraction and Verification) to move the state of the art forward on factual accuracy of knowledge graphs. His leadership extended to Natural Language Understanding, including use of seq2seq models in Alexa, and formed the team that federated across multiple Alexa Q&A systems. In 2022, Craig led teams that were building the next generation of textual Large Language Models for Amazon, and advanced personalisation for Alexa.
“Craig’s remarkable achievements in AI – and his visionary approach multi disciplinary multi modal AI will enable us to propel Natasha and our AI capabilities to newer frontiers and allow us to drive an even richer customer experience,” said Sachin Dev Duggal, Founder & Chief Wizard, Builder.ai. “His expertise is not just in technology, but in fostering scaled innovation that resonate with customers on a global scale. I’m thrilled to have Craig join the team and excited to see what he and the team add to the Platform and Natasha’s capabilities.”
In his new role, Saunders will lead the AI teams at Builder.ai, focusing on scaling and expanding the company’s existing AI capabilities, including Natasha, the world’s first AI product manager, and its new Code Generation System, which automates the transition from a user conversation directly to working code. His expertise will be instrumental in propelling Builder.ai to deliver even more for their customers through tailored software solutions with unprecedented efficiency.
“Joining Builder.ai feels like a natural progression in my career, allowing me to further push the boundaries of AI and machine learning solutions,” adds Craig Saunders. “I’m excited to be a part of the development of cutting-edge AI solutions that will not only transform the way software is created but also empower our customers to achieve their ambitious business goals.”
Craig received a PhD in Machine Learning from the University of London in 2000 and continued in the education sector, working nine years as an academic faculty at Royal Holloway, University of London and the University of Southampton. Utilising his expertise and knowledge, he transitioned to a career at Xerox where he delivered machine learning solutions across diverse industries including transportation, healthcare, and finance. Additionally, Craig has successfully published over 70 academic papers in leading conferences and journals, and holds several patents.
Established in 2016, Builder.ai leads the industry with its AI-powered composable software platform, allowing anyone with an idea to develop an app (web or mobile) more quickly and affordably. By decomposing software into reusable Lego-like features and combining them with cutting-edge AI and a patented software assembly line, Builder.ai has demonstrated global success in enabling customers of all sizes to adopt a software-first approach.
