Tonight's Featured Guest for our Weekly Virtual Happy Hour, 2/10/2025, 6pm ET
Joe Merrill, on How AI is changing the game for the IC and National Defense
Join us tonight, February 10th, 2025, 6-7pm ET, for a special discussion about how AI is changing the game for the IC and national defense with Joe Merrill, CEO of OpenTeams.
The dial in information will be sent out to all registrants just prior to the event. These are always free to attend.
A little bit about Joe…
Joe Merrill spent decades driving growth and innovation across diplomacy, venture capital, technology, and education. Known for inspiring others to be their best and seeing what is possible, Joe built a career transforming impactful organizations for growth. Currently the CEO of OpenTeams, Joe leads a team alongside Travis Oliphant that is literally building the core software behind much of the AI used today. OpenTeams builds PyTorch with Meta for AI, Nebari linking neural network models to data lakes, and contributes to other open source AI/ML projects like TensorFlow and many more. OpenTeams provides enterprise AI products and support to customers including Meta, Google, Nvidia, OpenAI, Amazon, and more. Prior to OpenTeams, Joe spent eight years as a General Partner at SputnikATX, a venture capital fund and accelerator. By “teaching nerds how to sell" SputnikATX delivered top decile returns across 75 investments (including OpenTeams), showcasing Joe’s ability to identify emerging trends, develop leaders, and drive investment performance. Joe’s impact extends beyond OpenTeams and venture capital. He is a board member and investor in transformative companies, including ModTechLabs, where he advances 3D AI technology for film, video, and gaming. As a founding board member of The STEM Academy non-profit, Joe helped develop the first project-based, blended online STEM curriculum and expanded its reach to global markets. Joe served as a trustee at four universities, two in the U.S. and two in Europe. A relentless advocate for education, Joe’s is committed to creating opportunities for those marginalized or left out by the status quo. Early in his career, Joe made significant contributions in corporate and diplomatic roles. As a senior executive at Apollo Global, he led strategic planning and financial diligence for a Carlyle-Apollo JV, refining his expertise in mergers, acquisitions, and portfolio management. At John Deere, he managed business development and global treasury funding, oversaw billion-dollar portfolios and helped expand the company further into China. Joe’s international experience is a common thread in his professional life. As a US diplomat and Career Member of the U.S. Foreign Service from 1998 to 2002, he represented the US in Washington, D.C., Sarajevo, Abuja, and Seoul. His work facilitated the economic side agreements to the Dayton Peace Accords, and he made contributions to energy diplomacy and democracy building in West Africa. Academically, Joe holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business (2004), where he studied finance and economics, earning a place on the Dean’s List. He also earned a BA with Honors in East Asian Studies from the University of California, Davis (1995), receiving the Outstanding Senior Award, was a member of the Omicron Delta Epsilon economic honor society and was a research assistant at the UC Berkeley Institute of Government Affairs. Joe’s work reveals his passion: helping others reach their full potential, bringing people together to do incredible things thought impossible.
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