20 generative AI power players in Europe
As excitement around generative AI continues tosweep acrossthe world of tech and startups, it can be difficult to know who to listen to, as just about everyone seems to be an expert on the topic now.
So who are the European founders, experts and operators worth knowing in this young and slightly mind-blowing field, which promises to changethe way we workandthe content we consume?
The following list of 20 names is far from comprehensive, but we’ve tried to focus on the founders leading big companies, and those with strong technical backgrounds in AI.
We’re also spotlighting experts and operators with solid CVs in machine learning, as well as those bringing different skills into the world of generative AI. And we’ve included a few names from the Stability AI stable who are working on products outside of Stable Diffusion (the text-to-image tool that competes with OpenAI’s DALL-E), to give you an idea of what could be coming next from the OpenAI competitor.
Here are 20 people to know in generative AI in Europe.
Slim and Beguir, cofounders of AI system developer InstaDeep, are the architects one of Europe’s highest profile generative AI exits. They sold their company to BioNTech — of Covid vaccine fame — for£562m in January.
InstaDeep is now headquartered in London, but Slim and Beguir launched the company in Tunis, Tunisia in 2014. Beguir, InstaDeep’s CEO, is also a machine learning development expert for Google, while chief web officer Slim also serves as co-lead for Tunisia-based Google Developer Group Carthage.
Tunstall-Pedoe founded UnlikelyAI in 2018, and raiseda $20m seed roundin September 2022. It’s an impressive feat, given that the startup’s products are largely still in stealth, but the investor interest is likely to do with the founder’s pedigree.
Tunstall-Pedoe previously founded True Knowledge (now Evi), a company that was later acquired by Amazon, and is credited with developing many of the key technologies around language processing that went into Alexa.
As cofounder and CEO of Stability AI, Mostaque is one of the best known names in Europe’s generative AI sector. He’s building a European, open-source competitor to Silicon Valley-based OpenAI, and doesn’t shy away fromcriticising his competitoracross the pond.
Mostaque spent his early career working at hedge funds, and also founded an anti-misinformation charity in 2015 calledAnanas Foundation, which was run on blockchain. He’ll be hoping that the investor hype around generative AI doesn’t wear off as quickly as it did for Web3.
Andrulis founded Aleph Alpha with Samuel Weinbach in 2019. Like Stability AI, Alephsaysit’s building an open source European answer to OpenAI, but with an eye on building “artificial general intelligence” — the holy grail of AI that can do anything.
Andrulis previously founded machine learning and computer vision startup Pallas Ludens, before becoming a senior AI research engineer at Apple.
Sana Labs has been running since 2016 and uses generative AI to allow businesses to easily create training content and knowledge summaries from internal company information. The Stockholm-based companyraised $34min December, and is already working with big clients like Merck, Kry and Klarna.
Hellermark — who founded Sana Labs when he was 20 — enrolled in a Stanford coding course when he wasjust 13 years oldand later collaborated onneuroscience researchat Cambridge University.
Stefan serves as CTO at Amsterdam-based Creative Fabrica, which she launched with cofounder Roemie Hillenaar in 2016. The companyraised$61m in January 2022 to scale its creators’ marketplace, which allows users to generate visual assets out of text-based prompts.
She started her career as a programmer at IBM Romania, before becoming CTO at Amsterdam-based furniture marketplace Crowdy House and later a developer at fashion marketplace Otrium.
