Meet Ady Das: Lantern’s Chief Innovation Officer, Builder of Magic, AI Optimist, and Occasional Rocket Dreamer

Lantern is excited to spotlight Ady Das, our Chief Innovation Officer—a product builder, technology leader, AI trailblazer, and firm believer that great work should feel a little bit like magic.

Ady brings a powerful mix of entrepreneurial grit, technical imagination, and practical execution to Lantern. He co-founded Motus, helping scale it into a leading mobility platform before its acquisition by Thoma Bravo. His career has also included work connected to Amazon Kindle, MTV Games, Rock Band, MIT Media Lab partnerships, ZoomInfo AI, and the UK National Lottery, one of the largest online lottery platforms in the world.

At Lantern, Ady is focused on building products that make customers stop and say, Wait… this changes everything.

“Building products that bring a bit of magic to our customers and users lights me up most,” Ady says. “Their reaction to something they know has the potential to change their lives forever is always priceless.”

For Ady, that magic comes from a clear formula: quality, efficiency, attention to detail, and a relentless focus on building world-class products without unnecessary time, cost, or complexity.

One lesson that shaped him came from a Red Bull flying competition, where Ady, Craig and their team spent hundreds of hours building a glider, but skipped one simple test flight. That missed step cost them the win and left him with a lasting reminder: never compromise on quality or preparation.

It is a lesson reinforced by another one of Ady’s skills: flying single-engine planes. In aviation, checklists are everything, and Ady brings that same discipline to product development.

Of course, innovation is not all systems and structure. Ady is especially energized by the freedom AI is creating.

“It’s as if someone waved a magic wand and removed everything mundane about the work we do,” he says. “We’ve become free to dream up anything and actually achieve it.”

Outside of work, Ady starts his mornings with a cappuccino, no screens, and a clear plan for the day. He is an avid reader, a surprisingly good cook and baker (according to his family), and someone who would probably be building a car or rocket if he were not building the future through technology.

Another fun fact: at 19 years old, Ady met Slash from Guns N’ Roses in a bar in Bangalore, India, where Slash spent an hour trying to convince him to get back together with his ex-girlfriend.

Today Ady is excited to help companies move beyond legacy, low-quality software and build products that are smarter, faster, and more joyful to use.

That is the kind of innovation Ady believes in: practical, ambitious, customer-centered, and just magical enough to make people believe in wild and exciting “what ifs”