The Open Accelerator: Turning AI Ideas Into Scalable Companies | Guest Stefanie Chiras
Building AI Boston
In this episode of Building AI Boston, hosts Anna and Cara sit down with technology executive Stefanie Chiras to discuss the launch of The O
Key takeaways
- The Open Accelerator is a partnership involving the Massachusetts AI Hub and IBM Ventures designed to help startups scale.
- Stefanie Chiras describes her career progression 'up the stack,' moving from silicon processing and chip design to software leadership at Red Hat.
Main topics
- The Open Accelerator initiative
- AI scaling in enterprise environments
Notable quotes
We're not here to take apart your engine and put it back together again. We're here to put nitrous oxide into your engine so your engine goes a whole lot faster.
Conclusion
The episode highlights the power of community-driven, collaborative mo
Transcript preview
Speaker 3 (0:07) Our guest today is Stephanie Chiris, a longtime technology executive and one of the leaders behind the Open Accelerator, a new Boston-based initiative designed to help early-stage Massachusetts AI companies move from promising prototypes to products that can actually work and scale in enterprise environments. Today, we're going to discuss why Boston is the place to be. Stephanie, welcome to the show. Speaker 1 (0:35) Oh, Anna, thank you so much. I'm delighted to be here with you and Cara. I am Speaker 3 (0:39) excited when Cara brings me someone I consider to be a new friend. I can't wait to see you at Boston AI Week coming up, but there's so much to unpack. I would love to start with where you're from, because I've been to this particular place, and I think it's unique to talk about the background of Central Mass and your background, particularly. Speaker 1 (1:00) And that's part of the reason why a lot of what we'll talk about here today around the Boston ecosystem, around the Massachusetts ecosystem and innovation and what we're what I'm currently working on is so near and dear to my heart because I'm from I'm from Worcester County, just outside of Worcester in a small town called Milbury. It's where I grew up. I went to. high school in Worcester, I went to college in Boston, and then I left for a long time for work and other things and came back. So I came back eight years ago and delighted to try and make a difference and contribute to what we have going on. No better time than in this renaissance and revolution of AI happening right now, for sure. Speaker 3 (1:38) Well, what's near and dear to my heart, and I know Cara will say this because we joined a panel at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute about the future of AI in the workforce. And there was something electric about mostly women, right, Cara? There was like 250 grads in that room. Speaker 2 (1:53) And I just Speaker 3 (1:54) thought, this is so, this is like, I've heard you say, Stephanie, this is an unsung area and so much brilliance. I think we forget in this age that AI can be really inspiring. And that conversation was like, One of the most inspired conversations I've been in. So I love your area. I love it. Yeah. Speaker 1 (2:13) I feel very passionate. I think Worcester is always, it's a hardworking city. It's always been a hardworking city. And there's so much innovation that comes out of it. Now there's so much medical out there. So yeah, it's great to see a spotlight on it. Speaker 2 (2:28) A lot of founders out there too. A lot of cool stuff being built. And you know, despite the name of the show, right? Like we, we, uh, We love Worcester and we love the rest of the state. And, you know, just the idea that you have, not only do you have the amazing schools in Boston, but, you know, you just go out to Worcester and there's all these other great schools. You go to Springfield, there's other great schools. Like it's just, it's special. That's for sure. Speaker 3 (2:50) Yeah. And you brought up a good point because you came back. I mean, can you tell us a little bit about where you went, but tell us a lot about why you came back to Boston, to Massachusetts. Speaker 1 (3:00) Yeah, it's funny. So I left after college because I went to graduate school on the West Coast. And then work took me to a postdoc in New Jersey and work in New York and then Austin, Texas for a period of time. And then I came back. And I think, you know, I love the. I love the pace and the focus and the earnest. I don't know how else to call it, but earnestness that exists here, right? It's roll up your sleeves, dig in whenever. And my family was always here. And we know that New England kind of spirit of self-reliance kind of thing. But every time I landed in Boston, coming home to visit the family. it felt like coming home. I always knew I would come back. It was just a matter of time, but there is a feeling here that I think it was just in my blood from being born and raised here. Speaker 2 (3:52) Yeah. And getting caught Speaker 1 (3:53) in traffic on Speaker 2 (3:54) the Speaker 1 (3:54) way either Speaker 2 (3:55) to or from Logan is Speaker 1 (3:57) part Speaker 2 (3:57) of it, right? That Speaker 1 (3:58) is for sure. I had, I drove to Cambridge, which is always a mistake because I take the T everywhere and it was, yeah, it was a long trek for two and a half miles. Speaker 2 (4:07) Yes, exactly. It's we used to be love that dirty water. I guess now we have to say love that terrible traffic, right? Speaker 3 (4:15) Well, tell us a little bit about what you're doing currently, because I think I know so much about your background. But I mean, to our audience, what I think is so interesting, Stephanie, is that you represent this kind of this overlay of interests in an ecosystem that's so ripe for. you know, not just dull mentoring. Tell us a little bit about like what you're doing currently, anything that you want to about what you're passionate about in your current work. Speaker 1 (4:41) Oh, yeah. I mean, so the Open Accelerator is a project of creation. We really started the creation of it in October of last year, and I'd say really earnestly getting out there and doing things in January. But it brings together a few things that it's very focused on AI, as you mentioned on it in the opening. And I think because AI has changed so, so many things. And we say that in like big topics, but to dig down to what that really means, like what has AI changed? I think a couple of things to me stand out. One is speed of which you can take an idea to realization to a technology realization, unprecedented. We've never been able to do that before, which means you can create a lot of stuff, which is good, but is that stuff able to actually be used, change the market, drive business impact? That's still a hard journey to take. And so how do we help? bridge that gap, not only to get to prototype, but get to realization. That's still a lot of work in this world of AI. I think the second piece, and I love this about AI, is that back in the day when I was in college and things, it was like you were either in technology or you weren't in technology. Now with AI, Anyone can build with technology. It's putting tools and capabilities into the hands of everyone. So taking together different expertise areas, bringing together and constantly iterating, not like, let me build something and pass it over to a user, but let me sit side by side with a user. We can build prototypes in 20 minutes, get feedback, rebuild it. And I think my whole career has been this random walk, a journey of trying to. build up experiences across, you know, different areas of technology, sales, product management, and other things. And I think in the world of AI, you can pull all of that together in a way that hasn't been able to be done before because of the capabilities AI provides. And I'm thrilled to be able to be part of something that helps bring that expertise and knowledge sharing to startups in Massachusetts. Speaker 2 (6:58) Right. Speaker 1 (6:58) And the discovery. Speaker 2 (7:00) The idea of discovery is so exciting. And when you think about how, you know, that maybe was in some ways sort of reserved for certain types of people, like you say, people doing the real, you know, either the bench science or the deep research and love to talk about what you started doing when you were earlier in your career, because that was pretty cool Speaker 3 (7:20) when you're Speaker 2 (7:20) telling us about that. Yeah. But like now maybe it's been. this journey of discovery has been democratized a little bit, which is pretty cool. Yeah, Speaker 3 (7:30) really cool. Speaker 2 (7:31) Yeah, so tell us about your sort of career journey to get here. I mean, you've been in, as Anna said, you've been in technology a long time, but tell us some of the things you did along the way. Speaker 1 (7:43) Yeah, my career has been a little bit, if you think of a hardware server, I've kind of worked my way up the stack, quite literally. My background in my, I really, when I grew up, I wanted to be a teacher, a professor. So I pursued my graduate degree and I was a metallurgist by training and I worked in metallization on silicon chips, which was. Super cool, right? I mean, it's like every time I'd see a wafer and find that it worked and what it could do in a computer is amazing to me. I still have wafers in my office because it's just such a... amazing demonstration of what technology can do. And then over a very long career, I worked my way up to silicon processing, to chip design, to subsystem design, to system architecture design, and then into product management for a server for servers and then into software when I joined Red Hat I led the Linux business for them for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and then some other products and then kind of expanded into leading the ecosystem work for them which is super interesting because it's everything from you know what Red Hat technology works on that could be you know processor chips Speaker 1 (9:06) accelerator chips, everything, all of those partnerships to the partners who resell Red Hat products to those who deploy it. So I do feel like I've kind of grown up through the stack as my career has gone on. Yeah. And to be like Speaker 2 (9:22) involved with Red Hat and Linux is like. I mean, anyone who's seen the revolution in technology in general just over the past several