Amar Hanspal is a senior business leader with 30+ years of experience driving innovation and enterprise transformation at scale. His ability to combine strategic insights with operational focus, coupled with his track record of building strong teams, has delivered powerful results throughout his career. Amar is an inspirational leader and believes in the ability of teams to accomplish big goals through clarity, customer focus, and persistence. He is passionate about mission-driven businesses, particularly those engaged in addressing climate change, education, and health.
Most recently, Amar was the CEO and Co-Founder of Bright Machines, a privately held, global technology company pioneering a software-driven approach to intelligently automating the final assembly of products. By leveraging software, AI, and adaptive robotics, the company fundamentally changes the flexibility, scalability, and economics of production. Bright Machines was ranked by Forbes as one of America's most promising AI companies, was named a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, and won Inc. Magazine’s 2021 “Best in Business” award for Manufacturing.
Prior to joining Bright Machines, Amar was Co-CEO and Chief Product Officer at Autodesk, where he architected the company’s transition from on-premise to cloud-based products, and from a license-based to subscription-focused business model. His responsibilities at Autodesk spanned $2B+ in revenue across multiple geographies and sales channels (direct, indirect, and e-commerce), with an organization of 10,000+ employees working on over 100 products. During his tenure at Autodesk, Amar also led the acquisition and integration of over 50 companies, ranging from technology tuck-ins to fully scaled businesses, and tripled the company’s market cap (from $8B to $24B) over the span of the cloud transformation.
Amar holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Bombay and Stony Brook University, respectively. He attended Stanford University’s Director’s College program. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of PTC (NASDAQ: PTC) and BeyondTrust and advises several early-stage companies. He previously served on the Board of Directors of Aspen Technology (NASDAQ: AZPN) and eSilicon (acquired by Inphi Corporation (NYSE: IPHI)).
