Shloak Rathod

Since 2021, age 16, I've published research at an IEEE conference, won prizes at UPenn & UMich hackathons (participating underage), and founded a startup generating high five-figure revenues, leading a team far older than me. In 2023, I moved from Mumbai to LA to study CS, Math, and Econ at UCLA. In 2024, I won 2nd overall at TreeHacks for jailbreaking the Apple Vision Pro just two weeks after its launch—winning ~$15k and 400k+ views. Later that year, I won three prizes at HackMIT and CalHacks for building satellite-connected TinyML systems and parallel GPU processing on iPhones. I then joined The Interaction Company of California (backed by Village Global, angels from Sequoia, DeepMind, and others) as the first engineering hire, commuting weekly between LA and Palo Alto. Currently, I'm building Astra to automate knowledge work for old school industries, starting with jewelry.

Love 🕺🌇 house music, 🌍 travelling, 🎮⚽ FIFA, podcasts, and essays.

📍 Mumbai, Palo Alto, and now Los Angeles.