Skip to content
Vithushan Sylvester at Jewel Changi Airport, Singapore

Thinking ahead of the technology.

Cofounder and CTO at IdeaBoxAI, leading a 50 person engineering organisation.

Published researcher in AI. I have built the engines, from vector databases to neural network architectures, and used them to change how real industries work. I speak and write about where AI and technology are really going, with the data to back it up.

Bootstrapped

2M+

revenue at IdeaBoxAI, grown to 35+ people

Published

2 papers

in IEEE Xplore and Applied Computer Systems

Speaker

Bangkok

Responsible Seafood Summit 2026

01 The argument

Most companies have an AI story. Few have an AI strategy.

The board wants a direction, the team wants a roadmap, and the demo works right up until it meets real data, real security reviews and real people. I work on the thinking first, then the research and the engineering that make it hold.

Real dataSecurity reviewsReal peopleThe demo worksAI storyAI strategy
Illustrative. No scale, no data.

The problem

AI decisions made from headlines rather than evidence, pilots that never earn a security sign off, and engineering teams asked to adopt tools nobody has shown them how to use well.

What I do about it

Lead the engineering organisation that ships Persona Intelligence, our platform, into regulated industries, publish research on making models trustworthy, and put the data in front of leaders and teams so the decisions get made on evidence.

02 Proof

From the engine room to the industry

I have built at both ends: the infrastructure most people never see, and the outcomes a business actually notices. The range is deliberate. Deep technology only earns its keep when it changes something real.

Engines

Built the engines

  1. 01A vector database engine, optimised for memory and scale
  2. 02Neural network architectures, including explainable models for medical imaging
  3. 03Memory systems that let AI agents work at billion vector scale
  4. 04An enterprise AI platform with connectors, security and observability built in

Outcomes

Changed the outcomes

  1. 01Sustainability reporting that enterprises can produce and stand behind
  2. 02Governance, risk and compliance work done in a fraction of the time
  3. 03A seafood industry and its supply chain moving onto digital rails
  4. 04Sales and solutions teams that close faster with an AI copilot

Before IdeaBoxAI: six years of engineering, from apprentice to technical lead, at Mitra Innovation and RightData.

03 Where I sit

Where the three meet

  1. Research tells you what is possible.
  2. Product tells you what is worth building.
  3. Running a company tells you what survives.

I work where the three meet.

Most people in AI do one of these. The value I bring is doing all three at once, so the research informs the product and the product funds the research.

Researchwhat is possibleProductwhat is worth buildingCompanywhat survives
  • Entrepreneurship

    Cofounder and CTO of IdeaBoxAI, an enterprise AI company headquartered in Cary, North Carolina. I lead a 50 person organisation across platform, forward deployed engineering and delivery. The platform is ISO 27001 certified and SOC 2 Type II compliant, and takes AI from first pilot to production in regulated industries.

    ideaboxai.com

  • AI research

    Published work on explainable AI for cardiac MRI segmentation, in Applied Computer Systems and in IEEE Xplore. My MSc thesis at the University of Moratuwa designs a multi index memory architecture for AI agents built for billion vector scale.

  • Product management

    I own product strategy and technical direction: what we build, for which roles, and in what order. Persona Intelligence, Helm for sales teams and Marea for the seafood supply chain all started as a product thesis before they became code.

04 Research

Research

Explainable AI, medical imaging, and how AI agents should remember.

  1. Applied Computer Systems, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 12–20

    January 2025

    Peering into the Heart: A Comprehensive Exploration of Semantic Segmentation and Explainable AI on the MnMs-2 Cardiac MRI Dataset

    Mohamed Ayoob, Oshan Nettasinghe, Vithushan Sylvester, Helmini Bowala, Hamdaan Mohideen

    Segmentation at Dice scores near 90 percent, with Grad CAM and feature ablation showing which regions drive each prediction.

    Read the paper
  2. IEEE Xplore

    2025

    An Examination of Harmonizing Multi-Vendor Cardiac MRI Data for Vendor-Neutral Image Segmentation

    Peer reviewed and published in IEEE Xplore. Full citation on the paper page.

    Read the paper
  3. MSc thesis, Department of Computational Mathematics, University of Moratuwa

    In progress

    A scalable multi index memory architecture for AI agents

    Hot and cold memory paths with HNSW indexing, so agent recall stays fast and accurate at billion vector scale.

04.1 Education and awards

Building products and doing research since undergrad

  1. 2019

    IIT Infoschol Scholarship

    Full scholarship from the Informatics Institute of Technology, Sri Lanka, to study for a BEng (Hons) in Software Engineering awarded by the University of Westminster, UK.

  2. 2020

    Apprentice engineer at Mitra Innovation

    Started as an apprentice engineer while studying. The first of six years of engineering, from apprentice to technical lead.

  3. 2021

    National Ingenuity Awards, SLASSCOM

    Best Innovative Product / Project, for my second year product: real time streaming of patient vital signs for rural healthcare.

  4. 2024

    Left Mitra Innovation as technical lead

    March 2024. Moved on to consult for startups, including RightData.

  5. 2024

    PROJEXPO Bronze Award, Technical Research and Development

    For research on improving the efficiency of cardiac MRI semantic segmentation, the work that became the Applied Computer Systems paper.

  6. 2024

    BEng (Hons) Software Engineering, First Class Honours

    University of Westminster, UK, studied at the Informatics Institute of Technology, Sri Lanka, 2019 to 2024.

  7. 2024

    Started IdeaBoxAI

    November 2024. Founded my own company to build an enterprise agentic AI platform.

  8. Now

    IdeaBoxAI, bootstrapped to 2M+ revenue

    Grown to 35+ people without outside funding.

  9. Now

    MSc, Department of Computational Mathematics, University of Moratuwa

    Active research on agentic AI systems. Thesis in progress on a scalable multi index memory architecture for AI agents.

05 Writing

Writing

Long form analysis, published on this site first, with the data underneath every chart.

All writing

Upcoming

  • How an AI agent should remember: hot and cold memory pathsUpcoming
  • The real cost of LLM tokens at enterprise scale, and what caching, compression and routing actually saveUpcoming
  • Forward deployed engineering: how we take enterprise AI from pilot to productionUpcoming

06 Work with me

What brings you here?

Three reasons people get in touch. Each has a small first step.

  • Speaking

    What do you speak about?

    What AI is really doing to work and to engineering teams, how enterprises get from pilot to production, and explainable AI. In September 2026 I spoke at the Responsible Seafood Summit in Bangkok, and I ran HackIndia 2026 for about 300 students in Chennai. I travel from Colombo and present remotely when the time zones work.

    Email me the event and the audience.

    Email about a talk

  • Advisory

    Do you advise founders or companies?

    I take a small number of advisory conversations with founders building in AI and data, usually on architecture, memory and the path from pilot to production.

    Email first with what you are building.

    Grab a virtual coffee

  • Joining the team

    Are you hiring?

    We hire senior engineers who want to work on agent memory, connectors and production AI systems, and forward deployed engineers who take enterprise deployments from pilot to live.

    Send a short note with something you have built.

    Send a short note

Also asked

What does IdeaBoxAI do?

IdeaBoxAI builds Persona Intelligence, an enterprise platform for role specific AI agents with memory, skills, connectors to over 1,000 systems, and natural language workflow automation. Helm is an application on top of it for sales and solutions teams. The company is headquartered in Cary, North Carolina.

What is your research about?

Two threads. Published work on explainable AI for medical imaging, including cardiac MRI segmentation research that won a PROJEXPO Bronze Award in 2024 and became a paper in Applied Computer Systems (2025), and a paper in IEEE Xplore. And my MSc thesis at the University of Moratuwa on a multi index memory architecture for AI agents built for billion vector scale.

Can I quote or republish your writing?

Quote freely with a link back. For republishing a full piece, email me; I usually say yes with attribution and a canonical link to this site.

07 Get in touch

Get in touch.

Speaking, advisory, or joining the team. Two or three lines is enough, and I reply to almost everything.

Privacy: this site sets no cookies and collects nothing. Email goes to me and nobody else.