United StatesPierre-Alain Cotte
Founder of Visioneer (predecessor company)
A French engineer and entrepreneur, founded Visioneer in Silicon Valley in March 1992. The company introduced the PaperMax in 1994 — the first lightweight, easy-to-use sheetfed scanner designed for everyday business users — and built foundational innovations in document imaging and capture. Visioneer later evolved into Nuance Communications, which became a leader in speech recognition and conversational AI before being acquired by Microsoft in 2022. Held multiple patents in imaging technology. Fluent in French, English, and German, and has maintained a low public profile relative to the scale of the company that grew out of his original venture.
