Maximilian Odendahl

Senior Director@AMD | Business Angel | Venture Partner

Cologne Bonn Region

About

Maximilian is an experienced tech executive on a mission to democratize accelerated computing, enabling intelligent electronic products of the future. He is currently serving as a Senior Director at AMD, the leader in high performance and adaptive computing, building AI compilers and other disruptive developer tools for customers targeting FPGAs, AI Engines and future heterogeneous computing platforms. He was the Co-founder and CEO of Silexica leading a stellar team from the spin-off from RWTH Aachen in 2014 until the acquisition by Xilinx in 2021. It served innovative companies in the automotive, robotics, wireless communications, aerospace, and financial industries and had raised $28m from leading international VCs. He turned founder to business angel to pass on his learned lessons to the next-generation of founders. He invests in disruptive, deep-tech companies with passionate founders in the domains of ML/AI, infrastructure and developers tools with the goal of making the world more prosperous, sustainable, and resilient. Max received a Computer Engineering diploma from RWTH Aachen University in 2010 and was formerly the Chief Engineer of the Chair for Software for Systems on Silicon leading 15 research assistants. His academic research has been published in over 20 publications in international computing conferences and journals. Before switching to management, he was an active open source contributor in large projects such as Symbian and OpenOffice, where he won the Gold Community Innovation award. He was selected as Germany's Top 40 under 40 in 2019.

Experience

  • Senior Director, Adaptive Computing Tools at AMD
    Feb 2022 - Present ยท 4 yrs 6 mos

    Leading the Adaptive Computing Tools group at AMD. Focused on building disruptive compiler-based AI developer tools for customers targeting embedded and client devices.

  • Business Angel at Odendahl Ventures
    Jan 2022 - Present ยท 4 yrs 7 mos

    Small investments into disruptive tech companies in the domains of infrastructure, Enterprise ML/AI and Deep Tech: ๐Ÿ’ป ๐ˆ๐ง๐Ÿ๐ซ๐š๐ฌ๐ญ๐ซ๐ฎ๐œ๐ญ๐ฎ๐ซ๐ž โ€ข ๐„๐๐ ๐ž๐ฅ๐ž๐ฌ๐ฌ ๐’๐ฒ๐ฌ๐ญ๐ž๐ฆ๐ฌ: Next-generation security with confidential computing โ€ข ๐๐ฌ๐ญ๐š๐œ๐ค: Unified control plane for GPU orchestration โ€ข ๐‚๐ฒ๐ฅ๐ข๐›: Disruptive Lithium-ion battery recycling for a true circular economy โ€ข ๐”๐ซ๐›๐š๐ง ๐‘๐š๐ฒ: Making goods accessible anytime for everyone ๐Ÿ’ก ๐„๐ง๐ญ๐ž๐ซ๐ฉ๐ซ๐ข๐ฌ๐ž ๐€๐ˆ ๐“๐จ๐จ๐ฅ๐ข๐ง๐  โ€ข ๐๐ž๐›๐ฎ๐ฅ๐ฒ: User analytics for Agentic AI โ€ข ๐’๐š๐Ÿ๐ž ๐ˆ๐ง๐ญ๐ž๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ข๐ ๐ž๐ง๐œ๐ž: Safe deployment of AI systems โ€ข ๐“๐ซ๐š๐œ๐ž๐๐ฅ๐จ๐œ: Securely collaborate to develop AI models on proprietary data โ€ข ๐’๐ฉ๐€๐ˆ๐ญ๐ข๐š๐ฅ ๐€๐ˆ: Spatial Foundation Models that can generate entire 3D environments โ€ข ๐—”๐—ฟ๐—น๐—ฒ๐—พ๐˜‚๐—ถ๐—ป ๐—”๐—œ: Next-Gen Data Analysis for insights and resilience in a volatile world โ€ข ๐๐จ๐ซ๐ญ๐ก๐›๐จ๐ฎ๐ง๐: Next-gen logistics software, starting with real-time D&D cost Reduction โ€ข ๐ง๐ฎ:๐‹๐ž๐ ๐š๐ฅ: All your legal needs in one place ๐Ÿš€๐ƒ๐ž๐ž๐ฉ ๐“๐ž๐œ๐ก โ€ข ๐’๐š๐Ÿ๐ž๐€๐ƒ: Scalable fleet mapping for autonomous driving โ€ข ๐‡๐ฒ๐ฉ๐ž๐ซ๐’๐ฉ๐š๐œ๐ž: Running real-time search at a billion scale using the Search Processing Unit (SPU) โ€ข ๐€๐ฅ๐ฅ๐…๐จ๐œ๐š๐ฅ ๐Ž๐ฉ๐ญ๐ข๐œ๐ฌ: Revolutionizing optics for solving nausea for AR/VR โ€ข ๐’๐ฒ๐ง๐ญ๐ก๐š๐ซ๐š: Democratizing In-Memory Computing

  • Venture Partner at Vsquared Ventures
    Nov 2023 - Present ยท 2 yrs 9 mos

    Vsquared Ventures backs entrepreneurs engineering the seemingly impossible. We are early-stage investors in deep-tech companies tackling society's most pressing challenges, with an emphasis on quantum and novel computing, green energy, robotics, AI/ML, new space, synthetic biology, and healthcare.

  • Senior Director, Adaptive Computing Tools at Xilinx
    Jun 2021 - Feb 2022 ยท 9 mos

    Continuing to lead the former Silexica team, building disruptive developer tools for customers targeting FPGAs, AI Engines and future adaptive computing platforms. Xilinx has been aquired by AMD in February 2022.

  • CEO & Co-Founder at Silexica
    Sep 2014 - Jun 2021 ยท 6 yrs 10 mos

    Silexica provides a software development platform reducing time-to-market of innovative software IP and intelligent products. Enabled by deep software analysis, heterogeneous hardware awareness and quick design space exploration, the SLX programming platform accelerates the journey from software to application-specific hardware systems, democratizing accelerated computing. Silexica has been aquired by Xilinx in June 2021