Adam Cheyer

Adam Cheyer
Adam Cheyer, Co-Founder of Siri
Born	1966-1967
Alma mater	Sharon High School Brandeis University UCLA
Known for	Siri, CALO
Scientific career
Fields	Artificial intelligence
Institutions	Apple, Inc. Siri SRI International Change.org Genetic Finance/Sentient Technologies

Adam Cheyer (born c. 1966) is a co-founder of Siri Inc. and formerly a director of engineering in the iPhone group at Apple. ^{[1] [2] [3]}

Early life and education

Cheyer attended Sharon High School, in Sharon, Massachusetts. After graduating in 1984, Cheyer earned a bachelor's degree in computer science from Brandeis University in 1988, and a master's degree in computer science and artificial intelligence from UCLA in 1993. ^{[4] [5]}

Career

Prior to Siri, he was a computer scientist and project director in SRI International's Artificial Intelligence Center, where he was the Chief Architect on the CALO project. ^[6] Cheyer was also a member of the founding team at Change.org ^[7] and a founder of Sentient Technologies (formerly Genetic Finance). ^{[8] [9]}

Adam left the Siri team in 2012 ^[10] and founded Viv Labs, which was acquired by Samsung in 2016. ^{[11] [12]}

After leaving Samsung, Adam Cheyer co-founded GamePlanner.AI with Siamak Hodjat, which was acquired by Airbnb in late 2023 for an estimated $200 million. ^[13] As of May 2024, Adam is the VP of AI Experience at Airbnb.

In 2024, Cheyer won the 2024 Brandeis University Alumni Achievement Award, which is given annually to "distinguished alumni for outstanding contributions to their chosen field and to society more broadly." ^[14]

Personal life

Cheyer is a semi-professional magician, and has appeared on numerous television shows, including Season 5 Episode 11 of Penn & Teller: Fool Us in 2018. ^[15] He is a member of the Academy of Magical Arts (AMA) and the International Brotherhood of Magicians (IBM). ^[16]

On numerous occasions, Cheyer has made reference to his career in software being aligned with his interest in magic, stating that “entrepreneurs and magicians are exactly the same. They imagine a desirable, impossible future that doesn't exist, and then they work backward from that vision to figure out the math and science to make it come true." ^[14]

Selected publications

• Cheyer, Adam & Martin, David (January 1999). "The Open Agent Architecture: A framework for building distributed software systems". Applied Artificial Intelligence . 13 (1–2).
• Cheyer, Adam (1998). "Multimodal Maps: An Agent-based Approach". In Bunt; Beun; Borghuis (eds.). Multimodal Human-Computer Communication, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence #1374. Springer. pp. 111–121.
• Cheyer, Adam (2005-11-06). "IRIS: Integrate. Relate. Infer. Share". 1st Workshop on the Semantic Desktop at the International Semantic Web Conference. Galway, Ireland: International Semantic Web Conference.
• Cheyer, Adam (June 2006). "A Collaborative Programming Environment for Web Interoperability". 1st Workshop on Semantic Wikis. Budva, Montenegro.
• Cheyer, Adam (2003-12-15). "Evolution of the Laws that Deal with the Utilization of Information Networks". 2003 BISC FLINT-CIBI International Joint Workshop on Soft Computing for Internet and BioInformatics. University of California, Berkeley.

References

1. "Apple Said to Lose Cheyer, Co-Creator of Siri Voice Unit". Bloomberg . 2012-09-11. Retrieved 2012-09-11.
2. Stodola, Barbara (2011-11-22). "A Michigan City success story: Former resident Dag Kittlaus, an Elston grad, creates Siri for Apple". The News-Dispatch . Retrieved 2011-12-08.
3. Boran, Marie (2011-11-16). "iRobot". The Irish Times . Retrieved 2011-12-08.
4. "About". Adam Cheyer. Retrieved 2013-05-18.
5. Sharon High School (Sharon, Mass ) (1984). The Marsengold. Sharon High School. Sharon High School.
6. "Adam Cheyer". SRI International Artificial Intelligence Center . Retrieved 2011-12-08.
7. Veneziani, Vince (2007-02-07). "Social Networking For Change(.org)". TechCrunch . Retrieved 2011-12-10.
8. "Sentient Team". Sentient Technologies, LLC.^{[ permanent dead link ]}
9. Gage, Deborah (2014-11-24). "Artificial Intelligence Company Sentient Emerges From Stealth". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2017-07-04.
10. "Apple Said to Lose Cheyer, Co-Creator of Siri Voice Unit". TechPanda. 2012-09-12. Retrieved 2017-07-04.
11. Smith, Chris (2017-06-08). "The inside story of how Apple's Siri lost the lead". Boy Genius Report . Retrieved 2017-07-04.
12. Panzarino, Matthew (2016-10-05). "Samsung acquires Viv, a next-gen AI assistant built by the creators of Apple's Siri" . Retrieved 2017-07-04.
13. "Who knows what GamePlanner does, but Airbnb just bought the company". TechCrunch. 2023-11-17. Retrieved 2023-11-18.
14. "Adam Cheyer '88 Harnesses the Magic of Artificial Intelligence". alumni.brandeis.edu. Retrieved 2026-02-12.
15. "Penn & Teller: Fool Us: Season 5, Episode 11 | Rotten Tomatoes". www.rottentomatoes.com. Retrieved 2026-02-12.
16. "Hire Adam Cheyer to Speak | Get Pricing And Availability | Book Today". gothamartists.com. Retrieved 2026-02-12.

External links

• Official website
• Adam Cheyer Keynote Speaker Bio Page
• A patent in speech assistance Personalized vocabulary for digital assistant, published Dec 2, 2014 (Google Patents website)