PeopleofSuperintelligence

Builder

Robert Nishihara

Robert Nishihara is an Anyscale co-founder and co-creator of Ray, a distributed system for AI applications. He grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, studied mathematics at Harvard, and joined Harvard's Intelligent Probabilistic Systems group as he turned toward AI. In 2017, he co-authored Ray and RLlib, and his 2019 Berkeley doctoral thesis examined systems for distributed machine learning. He co-founded Anyscale in 2019 to develop Ray; after Keerti Melkote became CEO in July 2024, Nishihara shifted toward customer work and product strategy. Ray joined the PyTorch Foundation in 2025, and Anyscale agreed to join Nscale in July 2026; as of October 2026, he is an Anyscale co-founder who opened Ray Summit 2026 with a focus on AI infrastructure.

Now at
Anyscale
Works
26

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 15 October 2026. Citations and h-index are hidden because this OpenAlex record may be incomplete or mix in other authors.

Timeline

  1. 2017–2018

    Ray and RLlib research

    He grows up in the San Francisco Bay Area, studies mathematics at Harvard, and joins the Harvard Intelligent Probabilistic Systems group after turning toward AI. In 2017, he co-authors Ray, a distributed system for emerging AI applications, and RLlib, a scalable library for reinforcement learning. Ray appears at OSDI and RLlib at ICML in 2018.

  2. 2019

    A thesis on distributed learning

    His UC Berkeley doctoral thesis examines systems and algorithms for distributed machine learning. The thesis appears in 2019.

  3. 2019

    Co-founding Anyscale

    He co-founds Anyscale with Ion Stoica and Philipp Moritz to develop and commercialize Ray, after starting the project at UC Berkeley to scale AI algorithms across CPU and GPU clusters.

  4. July 2024

    A product role at Anyscale

    In July 2024, Keerti Melkote becomes CEO. Nishihara shifts to customer interactions, product roadmap and strategy, with a focus on growing Anyscale's customer base.

  5. October 2025

    Ray joins the PyTorch Foundation

    Ray joins the PyTorch Foundation in October 2025. Nishihara says the foundation will help keep Ray open and community-driven for developers and their organizations.

  6. July 2026

    Anyscale agrees to join Nscale

    He co-authors Anyscale's July 2026 announcement that the company has agreed to join Nscale. The plan pairs its AI software with Nscale's compute infrastructure.

  7. As of October 2026

    Anyscale co-founder

    He is an Anyscale co-founder and Ray co-creator. At Ray Summit 2026, he opens Day 1 by framing the infrastructure demands of reinforcement learning, agentic rollouts, and physical simulation in frontier AI.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Robert Nishihara yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Robert Nishihara robertnishihara.com. Checked 15 October 2026.
  2. [1712.05889] Ray: A Distributed Framework for Emerging AI Applications arxiv.org. Checked 15 October 2026.
  3. [1712.09381] RLlib: Abstractions for Distributed Reinforcement Learning arxiv.org. Checked 15 October 2026.
  4. On Systems and Algorithms for Distributed Machine Learning www2.eecs.berkeley.edu. Checked 15 October 2026.
  5. Ray is Joining The PyTorch Foundation anyscale.com. Checked 15 October 2026.
  6. Anyscale Names Industry Veteran Keerti Melkote Chief Executive Officer anyscale.com. Checked 15 October 2026.
  7. Anyscale, software provider for OpenAI and other major firms, hires new CEO to boost sales semafor.com. Checked 15 October 2026.
  8. PyTorch Foundation Welcomes Ray to Deliver a Unified Open Source AI Compute Stack pytorch.org. Checked 15 October 2026.
  9. Anyscale signs definitive agreement to join Nscale anyscale.com. Checked 15 October 2026.
  10. Ray Summit 2026: Physical AI, RL, and the infrastructure that runs them all anyscale.com. Checked 15 October 2026.