Daniel Daogaru

Chief Product Officer

Daniel Daogaru is an executive leader, systems engineer, and product strategist with over two decades of experience transforming advanced research into enterprise-ready solutions in AI, IoT, computer vision, and connected mobility. As Chief Product Officer of ILLIUM AI, he drives product and technology strategy, bridging the gap between academic innovation and real-world deployment. Daogaru's career began as one of the first engineers at a Hughes and EDS joint venture that later became OnStar, where he worked on analog cellular systems and early CDMA before commercial networks existed. He went on to pioneer in-vehicle connectivity at Panasonic Automotive Systems, developing the industry's first "connected car" prototype and creating the first "Made for iPod" certified automotive system. At NexTraq (formerly Discrete Wireless), he led hardware engineering for one of the first large-scale commercial telematics platforms, shipping more than 600,000 devices worldwide. In the IoT and AI sector, Daogaru served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of IoT at Hortonworks (now Cloudera), where he directed corporate strategy, secured multimillion-dollar enterprise partnerships, and advanced open-source big data and streaming technologies including Apache Hadoop and NiFi. He later became Vice President at Motionloft, where he spearheaded the development of “Vimo”, the first commercial product built on NVIDIA’s Jetson TK1 and TX1 platforms. This breakthrough embedded computer vision system performed real-time, on-device pedestrian and vehicle analytics—delivering privacy-preserving insights at the edge years ahead of industry adoption. Daniel has been part of the OpenCV community since its early days, beginning with version 0.9, and has supported its evolution into the world’s most widely used computer vision platform. His career reflects a consistent theme: integrating open-source innovation into scalable, enterprise-grade products. Beyond engineering, he has led global P&L organizations as Senior Vice President at Systems on Chip and Executive Vice President at Globant, where he worked directly with C-suite executives to design AI-driven transformations for Fortune 500 enterprises. He has secured FCC, PTCRB, and carrier certifications for more than 30 wireless products across automotive and IoT markets. Daniel holds a Master of Science in Computer Information Systems from the Florida Institute of Technology, as well as certifications including Scrum Master and Lean Six Sigma Greenbelt. A long-standing supporter of open-source innovation and an active supporter of COVESA since its founding as the GENIVI Alliance, he continues to mentor AI startups and drive the evolution of connected systems worldwide.