Mark Chamness

Mark Chamness is Partner & Head of Data Science at Invictus Growth Partners. He bring three decades of experience in machine learning and large-scale AI systems, building enterprise platforms in cloud software, cybersecurity, and financial technology that have generated hundreds of millions of dollars in annual recurring revenue. Mark leads Invictus’s applied‑AI efforts: he maintains and evolves the firm’s Deal Intelligence Assessment Neural Engine (DIANE) platform, supports the investment team on AI‑related due diligence, and partners closely with portfolio leadership to design and execute scalable AI and ML strategies.

Before Invictus, Mark was Director of Data Science & Machine Learning at Coursera, where he owned the ML technical and strategic roadmaps, including model‑driven recommendations, ML‑graded assignments, and in‑course ML coaching. Previously, as Director of Data Science at Nutanix, he led a team of 15 data scientists and delivered applied AI products, such as a natural‑language customer‑support recommender and time‑series capacity forecasting that generated more than $25 million in annual revenue.

Earlier in his career, Mark was a Research Scientist at Data Domain (acquired by EMC), where he won EMC’s global Innovation Award and developed forecasting algorithms that generated over $100 million in annual revenue. While at EMC he filed more than 20 patents (18 granted) and re‑architected the company’s Internet of Things (IoT) system on a 100‑terabyte Greenplum database. He also held roles at Agitar Software (acquired by McCabe Software), Visa (AI consultant for anomaly‑based intrusion detection), and Sun Microsystems’ JavaSoft division, where he invented Incident Manager, a CRM system that produced a 10x increase in customer‑support productivity. Mark began his career as a Quantitative Analyst at Financial Security Assurance, working on the securitization of $2 billion in asset‑backed securities and developing algorithms to quantify interest‑rate risk.

Mark’s work in AI and ML has been published in leading journals. He is the inventor on 36 filed patents, with 29 granted, including 24 in machine learning. He earned a B.S. in Physics with Honors from the California Institute of Technology (adviser David Politzer, Nobel Prize 2004) and an M.S. in Statistics from San José State University, and he was awarded a full scholarship to the Ph.D. program in Physics at Brown University, where he conducted research under Leon Cooper (Nobel Prize 1972) at the Institute for Brain and Neural Systems on ML algorithms for biologically inspired pattern recognition.

A lifelong technologist, he started programming an HP‑41CX at age 12. Mark placed 21st nationally in the USA Mathematical Olympiad and was valedictorian of Kerman High School. He holds a black belt in Karate and served for ten years as head instructor of the Palo Alto Shotokan dojo.