Hovhannes Avoyan

Hovha'nnes Avoyan (Hovhannes Avoyan, ; born March 23, 1965), is an Armenian-American serial entrepreneur, investor and scholar. He is the co-founder and CEO of Picsart, a suite of online photo and video editing applications.

Early life and education Hovhannes Avoyan was born in 1965 in Yerevan, Armenia. He graduated from the State Engineering University of Armenia with a B.S. degree in Computer Science in 1987 and received a Masters in Political Science and International Affairs (M PSIA) from the American University of Armenia in 1995. He is also a 2005 graduate of Harvard Business School's Bertelsmann Senior Executive's program.

In 2007, Avoyan founded and served as General Manager of Monitis Inc., which was acquired by TeamViewer/GFI Software) in 2011.

In 2011, with his friend Artavazd Mehrabyan, Avoayan founded Picsart, a social photo and video editing platform, and became the company's CEO. Picsart's software reportedly has more than 150 million monthly active users, and has been downloaded 1 billion times as of September 2020.

Accolades

In 2016, Avoyan received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the American University of Armenia. In 2019, The Armenian Trade Network named Avoyan as the recipient of its Global Achievement Award.

Philanthropy Avoyan supports AI development in Armenia by establishing schools and best practices in the country to help its data scientists compete globally.

Artificial intelligence

Hovhannes is an author and speaker on artificial intelligence and advocates the establishment of machine learning and data science schools in Armenia.