Rana el Kaliouby

BIOGRAPHY

Why a Tech Power Player? For continued investment and mentorship in the local AI sector. 

Rana el Kaliouby flew back to Boston from India in November after meeting with leaders of the country’s artificial intelligence sector. Midair, she resolved to take a leap of faith: step down as deputy CEO of the Swedish AI company Smart Eye and launch a firm, Blue Tulip Ventures, to invest in AI startups. 

“There’s just so much happening, and it was a little bit of FOMO,” she recalls. “I was like, I’m missing out on all this exciting innovation with AI.”

It was a major pivot for the longtime entrepreneur, a trailblazer in the field of “emotion AI”—systems that use data and machine learning to provide insights into human feelings and behavior. In 2009, while a postdoc at the MIT Media Lab, el Kaliouby cofounded Affectiva, a startup built on emotion AI technology. Affectiva worked with industries from advertising to health care before it was acquired by Smart Eye, which uses AI to track driver safety and awareness, for $73.5 million in 2021. 

But the transition away from founder, she discovered, was a difficult one. “It was like an identity crisis,” says el Kaliouby, who remains an adviser at Smart Eye.

In early 2022, she dipped her toe into investing by launching a $12 million fund with fellow entrepreneur Rob May, investing in 40 startups that employ artificial intelligence. Now, with Blue Tulip, which she is launching with former Affectiva and Smart Eye chief marketing officer Gabi Zijderveld, the focus is “human-centric AI”—“AI that’s good for people, good for the planet, is ethical, and is built with diverse teams,” says el Kaliouby.

That final criterion is close to her heart. Muslim and born in Egypt, el Kaliouby is all too aware that AI does not have enough diversity. “If we’re going to use AI to solve health and climate and energy and food sustainability,” she says, “you need a diverse set of ideas. And that won’t come if we’re funding the same type of founders over and over again.”

As she adds venture capitalist to her list of accomplishments—entrepreneur, best-selling author, TED speaker—el Kaliouby is watching the AI scene in Boston. She sees the potential for leading industries, such as health, education, and energy, to be transformed by artificial intelligence. And she can’t wait to help.

“This is where I think there’s room for being different, being unique,” she says. “We have the talent, we have the dollars. We should be able to build incredible AI-first companies here. There is absolutely no reason not to.”

— Dana Gerber, Globe Staff