Susan Sly is stepping down as co-CEO of RadiusAI after more than five years at the helm of the Tempe-based company.
Sly, who co-founded RadiusAI in 2017, announced her departure from the company in a Nov. 21 LinkedIn post.
“In the five years that I have been with RadiusAI, we have continued to defy the odds and claim unchartered territory in AI. We have done the largest deployment of computer vision at the edge for exterior and interior analytics, won awards, been listed as a top startup consecutively, and pursued disruptive technologies,” Sly wrote. “I look forward to a bright future continuing to support our incredible team, represent the company with our strategic partners, and investors.”
Sly will remain a board member of RadiusAI and is succeeded by Aykut Dengi, who took over as CEO Nov. 21. RadiusAI has nearly 100 employees, with offices in Tempe and Bellevue, Washington.
“Susan was a fantastic asset to the company and has built our brand,” Dengi said. “She has many contributions. She is deemed the face of the company and also headed sales at some point in her capacity as co-CEO. It was a great pleasure working with her and I learned a lot from her.”
Dengi most recently served alongside Sly as co-CEO of RadiusAI. He was also vice president of product for the company.
Prior to RadiusAI, Dengi was a research associate professor and director of the Internet of Things Collaboratory at Arizona State University, according to his LinkedIn page.
“I’ve been in technology for all my career, and what I really enjoy doing best is putting together a team that takes visionary technology and makes it useful for customers,” he told the Business Journal. “I really enjoy both parts of it in this company and I think we’ve done a fantastic job.”
When reached by phone Nov. 22, Sly said she was not immediately available for comment on her departure from RadiusAI but told the Business Journal she'll announce her next endeavor in the near future.
Sly is a tech investor, best-selling author, entrepreneur, and professional keynote speaker, having been featured at events for Nvidia, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Intel and Lenovo. She has more than 30 years of experience in entrepreneurship, sales and leadership and helped generate nearly $2 billion in revenue for several companies.
Sly also hosts a podcast, Raw and Real Entrepreneurship, and was a finalist in the Female Founders category at the 2023 AZ Inno Fire Awards.
RadiusAI ready to meet market demand
RadiusAI leverages artificial intelligence for the retail industry. Retailers can integrate the company’s products in their systems to gain real-time insights on customer purchases, store layout, shelf outages and parking lot analytics, among other things.
RadiusAI has seen a rise in demand for two of its proprietary products: Viztel and Edge Central, Dengi said.
"This is a great time for our company and we are focusing on execution," Dengi said. “Startups go through cycles. We started the first few years working on getting a good product-market fit and satisfying our first customers and we’ve done a great deal since that time. We did a large deployment of one of the very few edge AI deployments in the world to 1,000 locations."
The company is now focusing on gaining a foothold in the market for its most recent product, ShopAssist, which Dengi describes as the “next-generation” of self-checkout technology.
