João Freitas, the former chief technology officer at Defined.ai, has left the Seattle-based artificial intelligence startup, joining a series of executive departures since the beginning of 2021.
Freitas, a six-year veteran of the company, could not be reached for comment by the Business Journal, but publicly announced his departure on LinkedIn last week.
"From the start, there are barriers to getting a business up and running, creating efficient teams, and growing at the pace of a fast-moving market like AI. However, when you are lucky to have such talent by your side there’s no barrier you cannot overcome," Freitas wrote on LinkedIn. "Although we made our mistakes, the wins surpass anything that did not go well."
Russ Vetrano, formerly a vice president of sales at Defined, confirmed to the Business Journal that he left the company in February. He is now vice president of sales at Shaip, a Defined competitor.
The high-level departures at Defined trace back to 2021.
Sridhar Raghavan, Defined's former chief product officer according to his LinkedIn, left the company late last summer. Raghavan was at the company for less than a year.
Walter Benadof, who had been Defined's chief operating officer, left the company last June, according to his LinkedIn page, after more than three years with the company. Former Chief Financial Officer Bob Parker and former Chief Marketing Officer Martin Stein also left the company in 2021.
“In consideration for the privacy of our employees — current and past, Defined.ai has a policy of not commenting on personnel,” the company said in a statement to the Business Journal.
Defined had also internally announced cuts to its workforce last summer, according to a company email obtained by the Business Journal. As of January, Defined had about 278 employees, according to PitchBook. That was down from reportedly more than 400 employees in December 2020.
In the internal email on Aug. 27, 2021, Defined co-founder and CEO Daniela Braga explained the company's moves.
"In the fiscal year of 2020 he (sic) executed a very aggressive hiring plan that aligned with a significant growth forecast we had, in alignment with our investors. As you all know that investment didn't turn into the appropriate ROI. ... The reality is that the numbers don't lie and unfortunately, because of that, we had to reduce our workforce," Braga wrote.
Defined was founded in 2015 by Braga and Amy Du, who was with the company for about a year. The startup offers correctly labeled data to train customers’ artificial intelligence technology.
When Defined in November announced its rebrand to Defined.ai from DefinedCrowd, it said it would offer a more comprehensive set of services, including the ability to buy and sell data, as well as order custom-built datasets from the Defined team. On its website, the company lists Bose, Toshiba and Salesforce as clients.
Defined has garnered numerous accolades over the years. Braga was named to President Joe Biden's National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource Task Force, and the Business Journal awarded her the Visionary Leadership Award last year. GeekWire in January named Defined one of its startups to watch, and the company landed on Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 list in 2020.
