Balaji Lakshmanan is Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Studiobit.io and a senior technology advisor to Kwaai, where he helps design and build open, personal AI systems and distributed computing architectures for privacy-preserving, human-centered assistants. With more than 20 years of experience in video, cloud, and AI, he has earned multiple patents for cloud switch architectures and ultra–low-latency audio/video systems, and has led the creation of secure, scalable voice and video delivery platforms used at enterprise scale.
At Kwaai, Lakshmanan has been instrumental in prototyping Personal AI capabilities, including conversational agents such as Lumi, custom NLP assistants for educators and creators, and KwaaiNet, a distributed compute layer with OpenAI-compatible APIs and integrations into tools like OpenWebUI and n8n for agentic workflow automation. A self-described AI visionary and “multimedia maverick,” he focuses on turning emerging technologies into practical, future-proof architectures that give individuals more control over their data and digital experiences.
