After leaving Apple's Special Projects Group, Salehian co-founded Aeva to revolutionize autonomous sensing with 4D LiDAR technology.
Early Life: An aerospace enthusiast and immigrant, Salehian utilized his Stanford engineering background to pivot from consumer product development to pioneering autonomous sensing systems.
First Break: His tenure as a Product Development Manager at Apple (Special Projects Group), where he managed sensing systems, provided the pivotal expertise and industry standing to launch Aeva.
Path to CEO: Prior to Aeva, he founded BlueLibris (a personal health monitoring startup acquired by Numera). In 2016, he teamed up with Mina Rezk to address the limitations of existing LiDAR, successfully taking Aeva public via SPAC in 2021.
Original Vision: To create a perception system that goes beyond simple depth, combining vision, depth, and motion sensors into a single, scalable chip-based 4D LiDAR product for autonomous vehicles and robotics.
Salehian's journey is marked by a technical obsession with sensing technologies, bridging the gap between high-end Apple-grade hardware development and the broader automation market. He navigated the challenging transition from private startup to public company, maintaining his leadership role throughout the intense R&D-heavy phase of the business. His career reflects a focus on deep-tech entrepreneurship, initially starting in health-tech before centering his efforts on the burgeoning robotics and autonomous vehicle sectors.
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