Overview
Stephen Lernout is the co-founder and CEO of Deontic, a company he co-founded in December 2022. He is based in Leuven. He has also been managing director of SUMA BV since January 2013.
Between January 2018 and September 2022 he was responsible for strategy and innovation at Nalantis. Earlier, he was CEO of Miia from April 2008 to December 2017, and from May 2009 to February 2012 he was founder and director of Fibrespaces.com.
Career history
In the news
- Come meet us in Karlsruhe next month! We'll be presenting our collaboration with IPG Automotive to bring prompt-powered, ODD-first scenario engineering into VIRTO. By combining VIRTO’s virtual validation capabilities with Deontic’s scenario intelligence layer, we help autonomy teams determine what to test, why to test it, and how to maintain traceable validation evidence. Together, we are moving from simulation enablement towards #ValidationAssurance.
- Tal Cohen’s article in Forbes offers a powerful way to frame the next phase of autonomous driving: intelligence alone is not enough. Physical AI also needs a 'habitat', a structured environment in which it can learn, be challenged, reveal its limits and earn permission to operate. This strongly resonates with what we are building at Deontic. As autonomous systems expand into new cities, road types, weather conditions and operating constraints, the real challenge is not simply producing more simulation. It is determining which
- Thank you to ASCS e.V. and Bechtle PLM Deutschland for having me at the Simulation Summit and Forum in Neckarsulm this week. A great opportunity to reconnect with the #AutonomousDriving community and explore the emerging #validation and #simulation topics in AD and ADAS. I had the chance to talk about the work Deontic is doing in #AgenticAI for #ScenarioEngineering and #ODDAuthoring and how we align with the ASAM e.V. #OpenSCENARIO, #OpenDRIVE and #OpenODD standards. The closing panel on how Europe could/should position itself
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