Ron Green is co-founder and chief technology officer of KUNGFU.AI, an AI development, implementation and consulting firm in Austin, Texas. He studied computer science at the University of Texas at Austin, has worked in artificial intelligence since the early 1990s, started several technology companies before KUNGFU.AI, and hosts the firm’s Hidden Layers podcast.
One Elective at UT Austin
He grew up a Longhorns fan, applied only to UT Austin, and was undecided on a major until a friend urged him toward computer science. In his last semester, with six hours left to finish, he took an introduction to artificial intelligence course as an elective. “It’s not an exaggeration to say that course opened my eyes to the world of artificial intelligence and what possibilities existed there,” he said in a 2021 UT Austin computer science profile. He graduated in 1992 and went on to a master’s degree in evolutionary and adaptive systems at the University of Sussex in England, a program he described as “essentially artificial intelligence” at a time when the field avoided the name.
Startups Before KUNGFU.AI
He ran software development at Visible Genetics, which Bayer acquired, at Powered, which Dachis Group acquired, and at Ziften Technologies. He then founded and led Thrive Technologies, a mobile healthcare startup that was acquired by CLOUD, before joining KUNGFU.AI as chief technology officer in March 2018 (KUNGFU.AI).
Building Custom AI at KUNGFU.AI
Stephen Straus started KUNGFU.AI in 2017 with Steve Meier, and brought in Green and Zhangzhang Si as its technical co-founders. Green’s work there is building custom AI systems that clients put into production use. In the 2021 profile he said most companies “have not even begun to understand, let alone utilize these new capabilities in AI,” and that the firm turns down work that will not do good: “if it’s not going to make the world better, quite frankly, we’re not interested.”
He mentors founders at Capital Factory, the Austin startup center, and since January 2024 has hosted Hidden Layers, where he talks with researchers and clients about new AI research and how it is used.