June/July 2019 65
“I’ve looked up to him ever since I first got to know him.”
Vu immigrated to the United States in 1999, when he was accepted
at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. There, he
graduated with a degree in computer science and became roommates
with fellow student Jared Go, who is now one of his OhmiLabs
business partners.
After Carnegie Mellon, Vu attended Stanford (as did Go), earning
a PhD in computer science, with a special interest in artificial
intelligence (AI).
Known as a serial entrepreneur, Vu has started several companies,
one of which he sold to Google. He worked as a software engineer
for Google for three years, but missed the exciting world of startups.
After leaving Google in 2014, he launched three more startups:
Tappy, a location-based chat app, Kambria, which developed the
open source platform being used to create Ohmni, and the most
recent, OhmniLabs, which is making the robots themselves.
“The startup life is challenging, but I love it,” says Vu. “Working
on a hardware startup has its own set of challenges, especially on
CHRIS SCHMAUCH, GROOMING BY ROSE HILL
THUC VU AND TELEPRESENCE
ROBOTS AT OHMNILABS