Aoi Otani

Aoi Otani is the Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Liva AI, an artificial intelligence startup based in San Francisco, California. Founded in 2025, the two-person enterprise technology company is backed by Y Combinator and develops high-quality human voice and video datasets to train realistic AI models. Previously, Otani studied Computer Science and Biology at Harvard University, building deep technical expertise in computational biology and generative artificial intelligence. As a machine learning researcher, Otani has published over five academic papers focusing on image segmentation, protein fitness modeling, and domain adaptation. Having published their first research paper at age 17, their scientific work appears in prominent peer-reviewed academic journals and conferences including Nature and ICML. Otani's current focus centers on advancing machine learning infrastructure by providing specialized training data pipelines for next-generation speech and video models.