Octo CEO to deliver 2024 commencement address

Mehul Sanghani, chief executive officer and founder of Octo, will deliver the keynote address at Virginia Tech’s University Commencement ceremony on Friday, May 10.

Octo is a technology firm focused on solving national security’s most complex problems. In the last decade, Sanghani built and grew the company around the foundational belief of meeting, exceeding, and advancing customer missions. 

Sanghani took a leap of faith founding Octo at the age of 30 with encouragement from his family and others. Since its inception in 2006, the company has experienced exponential success under his leadership. 

Octo has been repeatedly recognized, catching the attention of a number of Fortune 100 companies as an acquisition target. In January 2023, IBM announced it was acquiring the company for just under $1.3 billion.

In 2021, a gift from Mehul and his wife, Hema Sanghani, also a Virginia Tech graduate, made a historic $10 million gift to their alma mater; $1.5 million of the gift was allocated to establish The Market of Virginia Tech, a first-of-its-kind on-campus food pantry to students facing food insecurity.

The Sanghanis’ gift also endowed the Sanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics. Read full story here.