Karthik Balakrishnan

Karthik Balakrishnan is the Co-founder of ACTUAL, an enterprise software platform focused on infrastructure modeling and finance, based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He earned a PhD in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University before co-founding Coin, a consumer hardware and smart-card startup. Coin participated in the Y Combinator W13 batch and scaled its technology before being acquired by Fitbit in May 2016. Following this exit, Balakrishnan transitioned to the aviation sector to found and lead Airbus UTM, an internal division at Airbus tasked with developing autonomous air traffic control infrastructure for global drone networks. He now drives software innovation at ACTUAL to help organizations digitally plan, simulate, and secure financing for complex infrastructure developments. His career bridges aerospace engineering and enterprise technology, maintaining a consistent focus on building scalable systems for emerging industries.