Fangchang Ma is Co-Founder and CEO of Nuance Labs, a Seattle-based AI research lab building the first human foundation model that understands and expresses emotion in real time across speech, facial expression, and body language.

Fangchang earned a PhD in Autonomous Systems and Robotics from MIT and a BEng in Computer Engineering from HKUST, before joining Apple where he led research in neural rendering and depth estimation for AR/VR, contributing to Apple Vision Pro.

Fangchang identified a structural flaw in existing AI avatars, arguing that stitching together separate voice-to-text, language model, and text-to-voice systems creates unnatural lag and blank stares that prevent genuine human-AI connection.

Prior to Nuance Labs, Fangchang served as Research Manager at Apple and was a Founder Fellow at South Park Commons, building a track record of translating cutting-edge research into real-world products alongside co-founders Edward Zhang and Karren Yang.

Nuance Labs has raised $60M in total funding, including a $50M Series A led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from NVIDIA, Accel, South Park Commons, and Define Ventures, and is preparing its first public research preview.