Zia Chishti

Muhammad Ziaullah Khan Chishti (; born 1971) is a Pakistani-American investor and business executive. He is the co-founder of Align Technology and TRG Global. He is also the co-founder of Afiniti.

After starting his career as a Morgan Stanley investment banker, Chishti invented the medical device Invisalign and co-founded Align Technology to market the product Chishti was a named inventor on around 150 issued patents by 2018, and had co-founded three unicorn startup companies. In 2021, he resigned after accusations of sexual harassment and violence in his career were made public.

Early life and education Zia Chishti was born as Wilson Lear in 1971

Career Invisalign Technology Undergoing a course of orthodontic treatment in his early twenties, Chishti envisioned clear plastic appliances instead of metal braces. The Food and Drug Administration granted Align Technology approval to sell and market Invisalign in 1998.

In 2005, Chishti and several former Align Technology employees founded the medical device company Orthoclear. The company settled a patent infringement lawsuit filed by Align in 2006, with Align purchasing Orthoclear's intellectual property for $20 million. Chishti subsequently returned his attention to TRG.

Afiniti and unicorn valuations In 2005 Chishti founded Afiniti in Washington, D.C., As CEO and chairman,

By 2017, The Resource Group was operating as an equity vehicle That April, Chishti was also a recipient of the MIT AI Innovator Award.

Views on artificial intelligence Chishti has been a critic of the "hype" surrounding artificial intelligence, arguing in 2018 that society is headed for another AI winter. He has stated that the benefits of artificial intelligence are evolutionary, rather than revolutionary,

Sexual assault accusations

On November 16, 2021, a former female employee of Afiniti, Tatiana Spottiswoode, testified before the United States House Committee on the Judiciary. She testified that she had first met Chishti through her father's business ties when she was 12 or 13; that she began working at Afiniti in 2016 under an employment agreement that included arbitration and confidentiality; and that over the following roughly 18 months he alternately pressured her for sex and, when she refused, ignored or humiliated her at work in ways that made her fear losing her job. She said she told him repeatedly—including in writing—that she did not consent to a sexual relationship, and that in a January 2017 email she wrote that he had behaved inappropriately "with my explicit nonconsent" on three occasions. She further testified that he refused to speak to her for months after she declined a trip to Cuba with him; that during a work trip to Dubai he put his hand inside her pants and grabbed her buttocks in front of coworkers without the company taking action on her behalf; that he called her a "bitch" in front of coworkers when she refused to hold his hand; that shortly before a September 2017 performance review involving her work on Brazilian accounts he sent two pornographic emails describing a rape fantasy including strangulation; and that during a 2017 business trip to Brazil he sexually assaulted and beat her in a hotel room, responding "Good" when she said he was hurting her, after which she sought medical care for cuts, bruising, and possible concussion.

On November 18, 2021, Chishti left his roles at Afiniti. On November 28, 2021, he resigned from all roles at TRG and its affiliates.

In December 2022, Chishti filed a federal defamation lawsuit against Spottiswoode, saying she had "weaponized" a "consensual love affair" and had lied under oath. The lawsuit was criticized as a disincentive to speak against rich abusers who could afford to bully witnesses with the threat of expensive litigation.

Chishti lost a mandatory arbitration case on the dispute in which he was ordered to pay over $5 million to Spottiswoode. He subsequently lost, in October 2024, a defamation court case against Spottiswoode in the Washington DC District Court, which the court stated was a "thinly veiled attempt to undo the outcome of an arbitration that rejected Chishti’s account of events and ruled in Spottiswoode’s favour".

In March 2025, The Daily Telegraph apologised and paid substantial damages in a libel settlement with Chishti in England, for its repeated reporting from November 2021 to February 2023 of sexual misconduct allegations made by Spottiswoode.

Personal life In July 2001, People Magazine listed Chishti among the top 50 bachelors in the United States. Chishti works out of Washington, D.C.

In 2020, Chishti married Sarah Pobereskin in Bermuda.