Towaki Takikawa

Towaki Takikawa is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Outerport, an artificial intelligence startup focused on automating physical product design and engineering processes. Prior to launching the company in 2025, he served as a Research Scientist at NVIDIA Research within the New Experiences Research Group and Spatial Intelligence Lab. He is currently on leave from his doctoral studies at the University of Toronto, where he conducted advanced artificial intelligence research under the supervision of Sanja Fidler and Alec Jacobson. Throughout his academic and corporate career, Takikawa has authored over ten research publications that have accumulated more than 4,500 citations at top industry conferences, including CVPR and SIGGRAPH. His current professional focus centers on leveraging 3D generative models and AI agents to accelerate design validation, manufacturability checks, and supply-chain risk analysis for complex hardware engineering.