Ali Agha

Dr. Ali Agha is a leader in robotic autonomy and embodied artificial intelligence. As co-founder and CEO of FieldAI, Agha oversees the development of advanced embodied AI and robotic autonomy technologies for complex, unstructured, and off-road environments. With nearly two decades of experience in autonomy projects, Agha has built a career at the intersection of artificial intelligence research and real-world deployment in the robotics industry.

Before founding FieldAI, Agha began his career as a researcher at Qualcomm Research, where he launched the company's efforts in robotic autonomy by developing the first autonomy architectures for autonomous drones. His academic background includes a doctorate in computer science and engineering with a focus on robotics from Texas A&M University and postdoctoral studies in robotics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He later joined NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where his work achieved national and international recognition.

During his seven-year tenure at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Agha served as principal investigator for high-profile projects in autonomy, including the DARPA Subterranean Challenge, DARPA RACER (self-driving off-road cars), NASA's Autonomous Mars Cave Exploration, and Coordinated Autonomy for Prototype Mars Helicopter-Rover. He led Team CoSTAR and the development of the NeBula autonomy solution, with his team placing first worldwide at the DARPA Challenge for autonomous urban-structure exploration using a team of legged, wheeled, and flying robots. Over his career, Agha has managed hundreds of millions in federal grants, industry, and institutional funding as both principal investigator and co-investigator.

FieldAI was founded by Ali Agha, Shayegan Omidshafiei (president and chief scientist), and David Fan (CTO), with the goal of bringing proven technology from extreme environments to commercial markets. FieldAI develops autonomous robots and embodied AI systems for industries such as construction, energy, mining, and logistics. Its Field Foundation Models incorporate context and safety awareness into unknown conditions, enabling robots to navigate dynamic and unpredictable environments without maps, GPS, or predefined trajectories. Agha has spoken at major industry events such as RoboBusiness, discussing how a physics-first foundation model for embodied intelligence addresses autonomy challenges. Unlike conventional vision or language models adapted for robotics, Field Foundation Models are designed specifically to handle uncertainty, risk, and the physical constraints of real-world environments.

Under Agha's leadership, FieldAI has become a globally recognized company in physical AI. FieldAI has been recognized by Fast Company as one of the Top 10 most innovative AI companies, alongside Google and Anthropic. FieldAI raised a $314 million Series A at a $2 billion valuation and has grown to over 180 employees across engineering, sales, and growth functions. Agha has developed a new class of foundation models for embodied intelligence that enable scalable, context-aware, and generalizable behavior in complex settings, and is recognized internationally for contributions to embodied intelligence, resilience in autonomy, and field-deployable robotic systems.