President Jim Gash (left) talks with Armada AI CEO and co-founder Dan Wright (right) during the President Speaker Series in the Surfboard Room on Sept. 1. Wright spoke about his studies in the Great Books program at Pepperdine. Photo by Oliver Evans
Dan Wright, CEO and co-founder of Armada AI, joined President Jim Gash on Sept. 1 in the Surfboard Room for a discussion on AI and its impacts on our future.
The event was the first in the President’s Speaker Series for the fall semester. In the discussion, Wright invited audience members to think deeply about the future of AI and how it may increase productivity, prevent disasters and save lives.
“What I realized is that AI had not reached the oil field, did not reach the mines, the battlefields, the places where there are natural disasters remaining to respond to,” Wright said during his conversation with Gash. “I knew that if we didn’t fix that, if we didn’t bridge that digital divide, it was gonna cause lots of issues.”
Wright, a Seaver College alum (’06), previously served as the CEO of the AI platform DataRobot. The workforce platform and enterprise-level AI is designed to unify complex enterprise work environments, according to DataRobot’s Website.
After an employee revolt — which occurred after Wright and other top DataRobot executives sold $32 million of private company stock and used a private jet for an expensive retreat to the Virgin Islands, according to the Boston Globe — Wright resigned from the company.
Wright also served as the CEO for AppDynamics, a company that helps businesses run smoothly with performance analytics and transaction monitoring, according to the AppDynamics website.
Arrmada AI debuted in 2023. Wright started the company alongside Jon Runyan and Pradeep Nair, with a focus on making artificial intelligence that responded to real-world problems and solved them at high speeds, according to Armada AI‘s website.
Wright emphasized that many current AI platforms don’t respond fast enough to prevent disasters and save lives. Using dam technology as an example, Wright said sensor data is not processing fast enough to help people, adding that seeing warning signs hours after a dam breaks makes no difference. Wright then said Armada recognizes the value of time in the real world and emphasizes the speed of its modular infrastructure.
“I was researching this thing that happened in Brazil where there was a dam break a few years ago that killed a few hundred people. Why is that, how can we fix that?” Wright said. “It turns out there are usually sensors all over these things. The issue is processing the data in real time. The issue is the latency.”
Wright said Armada AI emphasizes sovereignty by keeping data on-site within each organization. This allows users to be confident in the privacy of their information, giving them control over who views their data.
While at Pepperdine, Wright received a Bachelor of Science in International Business and a minor in Italian. He said the University challenged him to think deeply and was important to guiding his journey with a solid faith base.
“[College is] a sink or swim moment for your soul,” Wright said. “And then you’re at a crossroads where you’re gonna choose who you’re gonna be for the rest of your life. At that point, being surrounded by a university that embraces faith, a big faith community, is everything.”
Wright said thinking deeply is incredibly important to ensuring that AI is used for good.
“Think before you build the thing,” Wright said. “What could go wrong, and how do you prevent against that?”
Wright addressed energy usage and its potential disruption to communities. Wright said Armada AI is cooled by air and liquid cooling systems, with systems almost always located in rural areas in an effort to decrease disruption to communities.
Wright then discussed how AI is integral to the modern generation, with the main competition being between the United States and China. He said the United States winning the arms race on AI is very important to our future.
“This is the race of our time. If we lose this race, we just lose,” Wright said. “In terms of what it means to our economy, what it means to our national security and what things are over all places in the world.”
In an interview with the Graphic, Wright said he was confident that the United States would handle the power of AI responsibly.
“We are in a country where we have free speech, where people can debate things openly, people can talk about what could go wrong with AI and how could we prevent those really bad things from happening without any sort of fear of repercussions,” Wright said. “We’re at least debating all this stuff— in other parts of the world, that’s not even happening.”
Armada AI’s website contains a company manifesto regarding the future of AI and what the company hopes to achieve. At the end of the opening paragraph, Armada AI used a quote from Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and political ally of Donald Trump. Thiel believes that freedom and democracy are not compatible, favoring a form of libertarianism where tech wielders would have more power than government-elected officials, according to his co-authored manifesto post on Palantir‘s X account.
“We wanted flying cars. Instead we got 140 characters,” Thiel wrote in an April post on X in 2011.
Wright said Thiel’s quote matches his company’s ambition for solving real world issues.
“You need to have meaning behind your company,” Wright said. “Your company should be trying to solve real problems in the world that really matters. We want to be a company that solves real world problems with technology, and that’s, to me, what that quote is about.”
Wright was then asked by the Graphic if Thiel was admired by the company.
“I just like the quote,” Wright said, “Also, Founders Fund is one of our founding investors, and so, obviously I’ve thought about it from the point that they’re one of our investors as well. But mainly I just like the quote.”
Toward the end of the event, Gash and Wright spoke about future collaborations. Wright announced that he would be partnering with Pepperdine to give students mentorship from individuals who have built successful companies, with the goal of inspiring the next generation and guide future entrepreneurs to launch their own companies upon leaving Pepperdine.
The next President’s Speaker Series event will feature Katherine Birbalsingh, the head teacher of the Michaela Community School, on Oct. 23 in the Surfboard Room.
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Contact Natalie Amoroso via email: natalie.amoroso@pepperdine.edu
This story was copy edited Lila Rendel.