Nand Mulchandani steps down as CTO of the CIA

Nand Mulchandani’s time as chief technologist for the CIA has come to an end.

In an email to FedScoop, Mulchandani announced that his last day with the intelligence agency was June 21, exactly three years to the day that he was sworn in as its first CTO in 2022. 

Though he’s stepping down from the CTO role and as a full-time agency employee, Mulchandani said he will retain a role as an adviser to the CIA. 

Separately, in a public post on LinkedIn, he said he’s “planning to return to my roots in the tech industry as an entrepreneur, board member and advisor, and to spend time in academia.” Playfully, he now lists his latest role on his LinkedIn profile as the founder of an entity called “Sharks with Lasers,” a comical reference to the concept brought to life by Dr. Evil in the film “Austin Powers in Goldmember.”

“I’ll deeply miss the Agency, its mission, and my friends and colleagues there, and will always be grateful for an experience that was, in every way, life changing,” he wrote.

Mulchandani also spent three years in the Department of Defense as chief technology officer for the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, a predecessor organization for what is now the Chief Digital and AI Office. There, he played an important role in institutionalizing the Pentagon’s centralized AI capacity. 

“Technology is truly ‘eating the world,’ and is starting to hungrily consume the world of intelligence and national security,” Mulchandani wrote. “As we know, in today’s world, category-killing organizations are deep technology companies at heart. As one of the few senior leaders in Washington from Silicon Valley, my focus was to apply my business and tech experience to fundamentally transform our business model through technology. An occupational hazard is that we don’t talk much about our work, but it was fun to share glimpses of it all through news, podcasts, conferences, and guest lectures. This was truly one of the coolest jobs ever, and I’m proud of my contribution to the mission and our country.”

His departure comes as the CIA leans further into emerging tech adoption. In particular, the agency is exploring the use of artificial intelligence for enterprise business and open-source intelligence functions.