Damien Patton

Damien Patton (born July 11, 1972) is an American entrepreneur known for founding the AI company Banjo. He began his career in the U.S. Navy in 1991 and later transitioned to NASCAR, where he worked as a chief mechanic while earning a business degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

He founded Banjo in 2010, which evolved into a public safety AI event detection service, gaining significant contracts until his past involvement with white supremacist groups was revealed in 2020, leading to his resignation as CEO.

Early career
Patton joined the U.S. Navy in February 1991. In a 2015 Inc. profile, he said he wanted to enlist after seeing the 1990 Gulf War on TV. He said he rose up the ranks on the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk, leaving after two tours, ending up in San Diego, California. Patton said he had a "building and construction company I started as a kid", and sold it when in his mid-20s.

After starting on a NASCAR pit crew in 1993, he became the chief mechanic on a NASCAR team sponsored by Lowe's. His NASCAR career lasted eight years. Patton told Inc. that he got his degree from University of North Carolina at Greensboro's Bryant School of Business in three years while working for NASCAR, graduating magna cum laude.

He later worked as a crime scene investigator for Davidson, North Carolina Police Department while still working full-time. He eventually moved to Hawaii and got into wood flooring, including manufacturing, selling it in 2006.

By 2009 Patton was taking graduate classes at MIT, commuting from Las Vegas to Boston.

Banjo
After participating in hackathons in 2010 and 2011, Patton founded Banjo, then called Peer Compass, a company that created an "event-detection engine" which organizes geolocated public posts from various social media platforms. He developed software capable of performing over two quadrillion calculations per minute, monitoring a virtual grid of over 35 billion squares, each about the size of a football field, to detect anomalies in social media posts. Business figures such as Noam Bardin, co-founder and former CEO of Waze, and Tom Glocer, former CEO of Thomson Reuters, have praised Patton's approach and innovation in the field of social media intelligence.

Banjo's technology has led to early success, with media outlets like NBC and ESPN being among its first paying customers. The system's effectiveness was demonstrated during events such as a shooting at Florida State University, where Banjo alerted media faster than other sources.

By 2014 Banjo had pivoted to AI event detection of surveillance video for public safety, gaining a $20 million contract for the State of Utah in 2019 and attention from privacy advocates. When Patton's ties to the KKK from when he was a minor were uncovered in April 2020, the company experienced significant negative publicity, and their government contracts with Utah and Indiana were suspended.

Personal life and interests
Patton was married to Lynn Battistelli of Memphis,TN and had one child - at the time of his grand jury testimony in September 1991.

By 2015, Patton was married to Jennifer Peck, who worked at Banjo.

Controversies
Patton was born on July 11, 1972. During his teenage years, he lived on the streets of Los Angeles and became involved with white supremacist groups, including the KKK and Aryan Nations. He participated in activities such as painting swastikas and impersonating an FBI agent. At 17, he was involved in a drive-by shooting of a synagogue, leading to his arrest and subsequent flight from the state. In 1992, during a trial, he admitted to past affiliations with skinheads in the Navy and pleaded guilty to a juvenile offense in exchange for testimony.

In April 2020, his involvement with the Dixie Knights chapter of the KKK was uncovered by journalist Matt Stroud. Following this revelation, Patton resigned from his position as CEO of Banjo.