Thilak Rao

Thilak Rao is the co-founder of Numen, an on-device AI company started in 2023. Numen builds apps that run entirely on iPhone, iPad and Mac, with no account and no tracking. Its products include Private LLM, one of the first on-device AI apps on the App Store; Slop or Not, which detects AI-generated text and images; and Clean Links, which strips tracking from shared links.

Thilak is also a staff engineer at Booking.com, where he has worked since 2017. Previously, he was an early engineer at VaycayHero, a Y Combinator-backed startup acquired by RedAwning, and the first frontend hire at Finovera, a fintech company acquired by Paymentus. He has written software professionally since 2009.