Vinay Rao

Vinay Rao is the Chief Technology Officer of ROOST (Robust Open Online Safety Tools), where he builds open-source infrastructure for safety teams. Previously, he was Head of Safeguards at Anthropic, where he led development of detection and enforcement systems to reduce harm from misuse of AI models. At YouTube, he led analytics, detection, and regulatory compliance reporting. Prior to that, he led teams at Airbnb, Stripe, and Google to build safety systems in the marketplace, fintech, ads, and webspam areas. Before entering the safety space he pursued semiconductor modeling as an R&D engineer at Synopsys and conducted oil field research as a Scientist at Schlumberger. He holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Engineering from Stanford University and a B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, where he received the Institute Silver Medal.