Itamar Arel

Itamar Arel is a computer scientist, entrepreneur, and technology executive focused on machine intelligence and conversational AI. He earned his B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Ben Gurion University of the Negev, as well as an M.B.A. from the same institution. His professional work centers on applying artificial intelligence to financial analytics and voice-based customer interactions. He led Apprente's acquisition by McDonald’s and Tenyx's acquisition by Salesforce.

Dr. Itamar Arel completed his Bachelor of Science degree in 1995 and his Master of Science in 1998 at Ben Gurion University of the Negev under the guidance of Professor Dan Sadot. He later earned a Master of Business Administration in 2002 and completed his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2003, again under Professor Sadot. During his doctoral studies, he was awarded the 1999 Intel Scholarship for Excellence in Doctoral Studies in recognition of his early research in machine intelligence and high-performance computing.

Arel worked as a research assistant in the Optical Communication Laboratory at Ben Gurion University while pursuing his graduate studies. After graduation, he served as an engineering officer on active duty in the Israel Defense Forces from 1995 to 2000, gaining practical leadership and technical experience.

In 2003, he relocated to the United States to join the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, as an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He advanced through the academic ranks, earning tenure and becoming a full professor by 2009.

Itamar established and led the Machine Intelligence Lab in Tennessee, where he concentrated on machine learning and reinforcement learning. His academic research focused on adaptive algorithms and computational models for intelligent decision-making in complex environments.

Between January 2014 and July 2015, he served as a visiting associate professor in Stanford University’s Computer Science Department during a sabbatical. There, he collaborated with faculty members and graduate students on machine intelligence research and advanced learning systems.

Arel has obtained multiple patents, including work on high-speed traffic simulation and reinforcement learning architectures. In 2004, he received the U.S. Department of Energy CAREER Award for Young Investigators, acknowledging his contributions and potential in computational science.

Alongside his academic responsibilities, he pursued entrepreneurial ventures in artificial intelligence and technology. He co-founded and served as Chief Scientist at TeraCross, Inc. in Campbell, California, joining in February 2000 while completing his Ph.D. From 2008 to 2015, he co-founded Binatix Labs in Palo Alto, California, serving as Chief Technology Officer and applying proprietary machine learning techniques to financial data analytics, including market prediction, risk analysis, and automated decision-making.

Itamar founded Apprente in June 2017 to build voice technology systems that automate customer interactions in real-world settings. The company developed conversational AI solutions for the food and service industries using deep learning, natural language understanding, and reinforcement learning.

In April 2022, he co-founded Tenyx, Inc. and served as its CEO, focusing on AI-driven voice agents for customer service. In September 2024, Salesforce announced and completed its acquisition of Tenyx, after which he became Vice President of Voice AI Solutions at Salesforce. Before joining Salesforce full-time, he served as a strategic advisor to IBM Watson Orders in Mountain View, California, from January to March 2022. Throughout his career, Itamar Arel has maintained an active role in research and innovation, holding patents for hierarchical machine learning systems for lifelong learning, confidence-based reinforcement learning, and synthetic-data-trained conversational pipelines. He has also participated in DARPA’s UPSIDE program and holds senior memberships in IEEE, ACM, AAAI, and the BICA Society.