Brandeis Alumni, Family and Friends

Adam Cheyer ’88 Harnesses the Magic of Artificial Intelligence

September 17, 2024

The pioneering inventor of Siri and renowned magician receives 2024 Alumni Achievement Award.

Adam Cheyer ’88 is a big fan of magic. The wonder, curiosity, and thrill of doing the unimaginable captured his attention as a kid and helped him to become one of the most successful technology entrepreneurs of our time. 

Most notably, he invented Siri, the now ubiquitous digital assistant, which he sold to Apple in 2011 and is now estimated to be on more than 500 million mobile devices worldwide. But his entrepreneurial streak did not stop there. 

He was co-founder or founding member of several more start-ups, including Change.org, the world’s largest petition platform boasting more than half a billion members; Sentient, the first large-scale machine learning platform company; and Viv Labs, now known as Samsung’s voice assistant Bixby.

His most recent venture in artificial intelligence, GamePlanner.AI, was acquired last year by Airbnb, where he is now vice president of AI experience. 

“I'm focused on how AI can improve the user experience every time a guest or a host touches our application or website,” says Cheyer.

Cheyer is one of three Brandeis graduates to receive the 2024 Alumni Achievement Award. The university’s highest honor, the award is given annually to distinguished alumni for outstanding contributions to their chosen field and to society more broadly. He joins fellow 2024 winners Martha Kanter ’70, lifelong educator and under secretary of education during the Obama administration, and Leroy Ashwood ’71, social entrepreneur and founder and president of the nonprofit BRAVE for Veterans, Inc.

Innovation as a magic trick

Cheyer is also an award-winning magician and member of the Magic Castle in Los Angeles. He has performed in palaces and stadiums and for presidents, students, and general audiences everywhere. He even appeared on television with Penn & Teller. And magic isn’t just a side hobby. Rather, he leans on much the same skills as both a magician and entrepreneur. 

“Entrepreneurs and magicians are exactly the same. They imagine a desirable, impossible future that doesn't exist, and then they work backward from that vision to figure out the math and science to make it come true,” he explains. “David Copperfield flying over a stage and me conversing with a device in my pocket that knows who and where I am and can actually do things for me in the real world – these qualify equally as advancements in both magic and technology.”

Making the unimaginable an everyday tool

To say Cheyer has made a significant impact on his industry and society is an understatement. He has turned his visions of what was once unimaginable technology into household items, and has served as inspiration for other technologies that have significantly improved the lives of millions.

Looking back, Cheyer, who graduated with a bachelor of science in computer science, credits his Brandeis education for expanding his worldview beyond the math and science of technology. 

“When I started to think about a career, I asked myself, ‘What is the most interesting thing in the world?’ To me, the answer is the human mind. I think we are genius; the subtlety and brilliance of what we do every day is spectacular,” he said. 

Like many Brandeis students, his curiosity was rewarded when he stepped out of his lane and took liberal-arts courses not typically associated with a computer-science degree–linguistics, philosophy, psychology, and computational neuroscience. And that, he said, served as a springboard for everything that came after. 

“Being able to mix in all these different perspectives led me to artificial intelligence. My career really could not have started anywhere else but Brandeis.”