Michael W.

Who they are

Michael W. is Senior Agentic AI & Backend Engineer at SanDisk — came up through Palantir and Moveworks before joining SanDisk's AI push in March 2026.

Person

Michael joined SanDisk in March 2026, just as the company was hitting its stride as a freshly spun-out, publicly traded Flash storage company. Before that he was Senior Agentic AI Architect at Moveworks, one of the earlier enterprise AI platforms to go deep on autonomous agents. Before Moveworks, he was AI & Backend Developer at Palantir Technologies — a shop that demands precision in how AI reasoning gets applied to messy, high-stakes data. The through-line is clear: he's been building in the agentic AI space from when it was still fringe, moving from Palantir's data-ops world through Moveworks' enterprise automation and into SanDisk's hardware-adjacent AI infrastructure. He works remotely. No public writing surfaced — this is someone who ships, not someone who posts.

Company

SanDisk's most recent headline is a $3,085,774,648 secondary public offering on April 17, 2026, selling shares held by Western Digital — a significant step in fully separating from its former parent after spinning out in early 2025. Record Q3 2026 results followed: data center revenue up 233% sequentially, total revenue up 251% year over year, and gross margins of 78.4%. Analysts have sharply revised the fair value estimate from $264.95 to $1,772.91, citing tight NAND supply expected through 2027 and an improved margin profile. David Goeckeler, who ran the combined Western Digital, now leads the standalone SanDisk. Alexander R. Bradley joined the board and was appointed to the audit committee effective December 30, 2025.

Market

SanDisk competes in the Flash and NAND storage market against players including Seagate, Swissbit, and Memblaze, with AI-driven data center demand currently turbocharging growth. The company is navigating export controls around its BiCS8 technology and enterprise drives — geopolitics directly shapes what it can sell and where. On the upside, SanDisk is a named beneficiary of both the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act and 'Chips Act II' (2025), pulling in federal grants and tax credits to reshore R&D and advanced testing.

How they likely show up

  • Career pattern of Palantir → Moveworks → SanDisk shows a consistent move toward more autonomous, agentic AI systems — he follows the frontier, not the safe bet.
  • Specialist role pattern across all three employers → likely goes deep on a technical domain rather than broad across functions; expects depth in return from collaborators.
  • No public writing signal detected → probably forms and tests views internally rather than through public discourse; not looking for external validation.
  • Joined SanDisk in March 2026, a company mid-transformation → comfortable stepping into high-change environments where the architecture isn't settled yet.
  • Possibly — medium tenure shape across employers suggests he moves when the hard problem is solved, not on a fixed schedule.

Conversation tips

  • → Lead with the technical specifics of what you're working on — he's been doing agentic AI since before it was fashionable, so generic overviews will land flat.
  • → Ask about the Moveworks-to-SanDisk jump: going from pure enterprise SaaS AI to Flash storage infrastructure is an unusual move worth understanding on its own terms.
  • → Don't assume he's read your posts or thought pieces — he doesn't write publicly himself, and he'll engage on substance over reputation.
  • → He works remotely, so be deliberate about async context-setting before any live conversation — don't assume shared context.

Toolbox

Openers

  • Open on the Palantir-to-Moveworks arc — moving from Palantir's data ops rigour into Moveworks' enterprise agent platform is a pointed progression, and asking what changed in how he thinks about agentic systems across those two shops will get him talking.
  • Reference SanDisk's record Q3 2026 data center numbers (251% revenue growth year over year) — joining a hardware company mid-surge on the AI data center wave raises real questions about what the backend and AI infrastructure actually needs to handle.
  • Bring up the agentic AI architect title at Moveworks — 'architect' versus 'engineer' is a meaningful distinction, and asking what he was designing versus building there will surface how he thinks about system-level problems.

Discovery questions

  1. What does agentic AI infrastructure look like when the underlying hardware is the product — how does building at SanDisk differ from what you were solving at Moveworks?
  2. At Palantir you were working with some of the most constrained, high-stakes data environments around — what did that teach you about where agentic systems fail?
  3. SanDisk is navigating export controls on BiCS8 and enterprise drives at the same time it's riding an AI data center surge — how does that geopolitical layer show up in the engineering decisions you're making day to day?

Avoid

Don't open with broad AI trend talk or 'the future of agents' framing — someone who built in this space at Palantir and Moveworks before the hype cycle will want specifics, not positioning.

Make it yours

Tailor these openers to what you sell

These openers are generic. Sign in and tell Brief what you sell — it rewrites the hooks and questions around your pitch.

Sources

Brief on your next meeting?

Type any name. Get a structured pre-meeting brief in seconds.

Try Brief →

Generated by briefthecall.com from public web sources on July 20, 2026. Each claim is linked to its source above.

Automatically generated by AI from public sources. May be inaccurate or out of date. Remove or correct this profile →