Mike Rubino

Mike Rubino is Head of Talent at AI Fund, where he leads recruiting for the Visiting Engineer residency program and identifies the technical builders who go on to co-found new AI Fund companies. 

Mike’s focus is finding deeply technical builders with product judgment, execution speed, and founder-level ownership. His work centers on identifying people with clear evidence of exceptional ability: original technical work, rapid learning, and the ability to build from zero to one under uncertainty.

That bar was set at Neuralink, where Mike built the recruiting function from scratch and scaled the company from 40 to over 275 engineers and scientists in an environment where every hire required Elon Musk’s personal approval. 

“One of the things Elon hammered into my head was evidence of exceptional ability,” Mike says. “We do not hire anyone here unless they have something they bring to the table that we don’t currently have.” He operationalized that standard into a formal process that still shapes how Neuralink evaluates candidates.

Earlier, Mike spent nearly three years at Amazon building automated sourcing systems for AWS — experience that shaped his conviction that the best talent leaders build systems, not just pipelines. He later led talent at Chef Robotics through its Series A and built the function from day one at Promise, a Series B govtech company.

Across those roles, Mike has focused on building rigorous, repeatable systems for identifying high-slope technical talent, especially builders with the potential to become founders. He is also a co-founder of Syelo Ventures, a community and early-stage fund focused on recruiting technology.