Kunle Olukotun is the Cadence Design Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Stanford University. He is a pioneer in multicore processor design and the leader of the Stanford Hydra chip multiprocessor (CMP) research project. Based on the Hydra research, he founded Afara WebSystems to develop high-throughput, low-power multicore processors for server systems. The Afara multi-core processor, called Niagara, was acquired by Sun Microsystems and now powers all of Oracle's SPARC-based servers. More recently, he co-founded SambaNova Systems to translate hardware and software research innovations into products that accelerate the impact of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.

Olukotun is the Director of the Pervasive Parallel Lab and a member of the Data Analytics tor What's Next (DAWN) Lab, developing infrastructure for usable machine learning. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an ACM Fellow, and an IEEE Fellow for contributions to multiprocessors on a chip design and the commercialization of this technology. He also received the Harry H. Goode Memorial Award.

Olukotun received his Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from The University of Michigan.