Prakhar Mehrotra serves as Senior Vice President and Head of AI at PayPal. He is responsible for companywide AI-related efforts. He has extensive experience applying AI to address climate change and business challenges at scale. Previously, Prakhar served as Managing Director of AI at Blackstone, leading AI implementation across over 200 portfolio companies spanning industries including real estate, private equity, infrastructure, and growth equity while providing strategic guidance for the firm's AI-related data center and energy investments.
As Vice President & Officer of AI at Walmart, he led 450+ data scientists across Merchandising, Supply Chain, Store Operations, and Energy business units. During the critical period of COVID-19, his team's AI initiatives were instrumental in keeping Walmart's stores open and supply chains running efficiently. His team won the 2023 Franz Edelman Prize and INFORMS Prize for breakthrough work in retail truck routing and pricing optimization, which reduced carbon emissions by 98.6 million pounds while helping consumers save on costs during high inflation.
He also participated in the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID-19 Forecast Hub initiative, contributing to national pandemic response efforts. Earlier at Uber, he built and led a global team developing ML solutions for supply-demand planning and autonomous vehicle economics. He started his career as a Senior Data Scientist for recommendation systems at Twitter's Sales & Monetization team.