NVIDIA-empowered AI expert Azita Martin is revolutionizing the technology landscape.
Behind every great idea is someone who knows how to bring products to market. At NVIDIA, the pioneer in accelerated computing for artificial intelligence (AI), Azita Martin is the person who brings those next-gen technologies to retail, consumer packaged goods (CPG) and supply chain markets.
As the company’s general manager of AI for retail and CPG, she helps other companies develop and market their own game-changing AI apps using NVIDIA’s accelerated computing platform. This includes graphics processing units (GPUs) and, most importantly, NVIDIA’s application framework software, such as RAPIDS for Data Science, Omniverse for digital twins and Picasso, which is a generative AI visual service.
Her passion for bringing AI solutions to market gives Martin a bird’s-eye view of emerging trends. She’s inspired by NVIDIA’s founder and CEO Jensen Huang’s quip, “What we work on today is what is going to be around the corner in three to five years.”
That work includes innovating the technology to fuel the future of the logistics industry. Today, NVIDIA’s acceleration software helps retail and e-commerce companies use AI to improve operational efficiencies in distribution centers, bringing AI to the front and back of the store while keeping workers safe.
Some of her current projects include addressing “shrinking” (the loss of goods resulting from theft) and improving throughput in warehouses and distribution centers with computer vision and digital twin simulation. “This is a huge area right now,” says Martin. “For example, there’s a lot of interest in digital twins,” which is a precise digital representation of a warehouse or distribution center. This allows logistics teams to simulate various layouts and test impact and efficiencies before making expensive physical changes. Digital twins are also used for faster training of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) to maneuver safely around workers—allowing employees to spend less time moving goods and re-picking.
Another key area is routing optimization, the last-mile delivery challenge. Martin’s team has helped power AI solutions to plot fast, efficient deliveries for distributors, mass merchants and grocery chains in real time. She cites customers who have realized fuel savings of 85 cents per delivery across the board using NVIDIA CuOpt for routing optimization.
Meanwhile, large retailers use AI to anticipate sales trends so they can improve inventory levels. “They've been able to improve their forecast accuracy by three percentage points,” Martin says, a significant boost given the high cost of unsold merchandise. “That's a perfect example of using data science to increase efficiency.”
An aerospace engineering major, Martin’s path to identifying and marketing innovative AI solutions was not exactly linear. The native of Spain started as a structural engineer and later moved into sales with airplane manufacturers McDonnell Douglas and Airbus. For a woman in her twenties, she was one of very few women in the field: “Many times I would walk into a room full of pilots, and they’d say, 'Where’s the guy who’s going to present to us?”'
She was eventually hired by Silicon Graphics, which launched her next chapter in product management and high-tech marketing. “Technology changes so rapidly, and you need to constantly learn and reinvent yourself,” she says. “That’s what I love to do.”
As AI continues to advance, Martin encourages her customers to learn and evolve, too, including understanding that the key question to ask isn't whether ChatGPT will take jobs, but whether someone who has learned how to use ChatGPT will.
