Code, Creativity, & Change: Intel® Liftoff's Female Founders Driving Tomorrow's Tech

Intel® Liftoff members and female founders are leading deeptech and AI innovation, from no-code interfaces and enhancing 3D assets in the metaverse to pioneering early stroke detection. From enabling powerful development using no-code interfaces and optimizing 3D assets in the metaverse, to early stroke detection that promises a safer future, they are at the forefront of AI innovation. We’re highlighting their exciting contributions to the industry. 

ADAPTA Studio: Simona Perotto, Co Founder and President

Simona Perotto is a full professor at Politecnico Milano, in Lombardy, Italy. She is also a member of the Management Committee of the Interdepartmental Laboratory, MetaMAT.

More importantly in the context of deep tech startups, she is a founder of ADAPTA Studio, a Politecnico di Milano spinoff that is revolutionizing 3D asset optimization. Along with her co-founders Leonardo Locatelli, Francesco Clerici, and Simona Perotto with funding from 360 Capital Partners and Filippo Zanetti, they developed AMAZ3D, a cloud platform streamlining 3D asset optimization for web applications. AMAZ3D ensures rapid results with high-quality rendering, even for large assets up to 4GB, offering features like normals baking and automatic LOD. Given the increasing prevalence of photorealistic 3D assets, optimized objects are crucial, especially for e-commerce conversions, where a saved second boosts conversion by 7%. With the ever-expanding metaverse setting new polygon budgets, and game developers requiring LOD, AMAZ3D simplifies and automates the complex process, aiming to become the standard in web application 3D optimization.

AKULAR: Dana Rapos, Co-founder, General Counsel and acting CFO

With 20 years of international experience in corporate law, international finance, compliance, M&A transactions, and litigation coordination, Dana Rapos is a respected C-level legal and financial professional.

In 2017, she co-founded AKULAR, a global digital buildings and infrastructure startup. Serving as the General Counsel, Dana oversees legal diligence across multiple jurisdictions and manages US and EU finances, including transfer pricing in a CFO capacity. 

For AKULAR  impressive AR & VR visuals are a palpable starting point on the journey to the “living representation” of projects using Digital Twins. ACULAR is partnering with innovative investors and contractors to transform 3D models into robust project management tools. The Augmented Reality inspection feature allows site managers to rapidly identify and address errors, leading to substantial time and cost savings. With a pioneering cloud platform, AKULAR ensures 24/7 transparency for all stakeholders."

BuildShip: Harani Janakiraman, Co-founder and CEO  

BuildShip co-founder Harani Janakiraman is an Australian-based founder, engineer, and passionate coder. She  is not only a formidable engineer, serial co-founder, and angel investor, she is also a passionate supporter of programs like “Girls Who Code” and “Women Who Code”.

Harani’s flagship startup, BuildShip, is a visual backend builder that seamlessly merges no-code's simplicity with AI's robust capabilities on a scalable cloud platform. It empowers the next generation of product builders by offering the convenience of a no-code interface using simple English instructions and AI to create powerful, usable code, allowing the realization of product ideas through straightforward English commands. BuildShip integrates effortlessly with various tools such as Stripe, SendGrid, WhatsApp, or AI models from OpenAI and Replicate, as well as databases like Firebase, Supabase, and Postgres. Whether creating a feature-rich web3 application or a mobile app for managing electronic prescriptions, BuildShip serves as a versatile solution. It functions as a management tool for Firestore and cloud functions, facilitates API calls, integrates with LLMs, and formats data. In cases where a specific integration is absent, users can leverage AI to generate customized workflow nodes. BuildShip provides the best of both worlds, combining the simplicity of no-code with the capabilities of low-code.

CLIKA: Nayul Kim, Co-Founder and CEO

Nayul Kim specializes in “Tiny AI”, using compressed algorithms to simplify complex calculations and handle extensive data volumes. With an MBA from ICEX-CECO, a business school operated by the Spanish government's Trade Promotion Agency, she has led several market discovery and marketing projects, including B2B consulting initiatives, across global markets such as Korea, the Americas, the Middle East, and Europe.

Nayul co-founded CLIKA, inspired by CLIKA CTO Ben Asaf who led the specialized 'Tiny AI' technology development. Now serving as the CEO, she actively promotes the vision of Tiny AI, Everywhere and actively oversees the organization's overall operations.

CLIKA’s Auto TinyAI Solution reduces AI size by up to 95% so that these tiny systems can be deployed to smaller and more economical devices around us. The CLIKA AI compression SDK allows users to scale their AI applications by reducing troublesome AI compression processes to a ‘one-click’ experience, allowing them to choose CPU over GP and even Edge/IoT over CPU. Using these systems, CLIKA clients can save up to 80% HW/Cloud Infra setup costs.

CodeBlue: Ashmita Kumar, CEO and Co-Founder 

Ashmita Kumar is CEO and Co-Founder at Code Blue. A top UC Berkeley graduate and advocate for Girls in Technology, she sees her work, accurately, as vital for saving lives.

This is why CodeBlue, an early stroke detection system, was founded. Worldwide, 1 in 4 people will have a stroke in their lifetimes. Yet 60% of people cannot identify the major signs. Add to the fact that it takes on average 17-34 minutes to reach the nearest hospital in the US, and that it takes 76 minutes on average to receive care, and the chances of escaping with no damage are slim. A stroke is terrifying; it robs a person of their mobility, their memory, and their independence. The long-term cost of >$60k per person and the pain for victims and their families make strokes one of the most frightening health conditions a person can experience. Code Blue is an app revolutionizing stroke detection as we know it, combining early detection and rapid response to change the outcome. Non-invasive and passive, it recognizes the common symptoms of stroke like facial asymmetry and slurred speech, and immediately calls and texts a user’s emergency contact, saving millions of neurons a minute.

Ashita described the challenges in fostering innovation, saying that the most significant challenges they’ve faced in developing and scaling has been trying to file the patent; which they taught themselves how to do and have filed the provisional patent now. Also improving their ML models based off of limited data, so they pivoted and learned how to do keypoint detection instead. The final challenge was learning how to advocate for the company and raise money. They have done multiple pitch competitions with good results already: Innovators@Cal, the Hult Prize (2nd place), Haas Innovation Fund (waiting to hear back), Big Ideas Grant (finalist, final place TBD in April), etc.

“The biggest challenge is honestly trying to show just how important this is socially and financially and raise funding to support our upcoming clinical trial. To foster innovation and maintain a competitive advantage, in spite of being students, we work anywhere from 20-40 hours a week, iterating our design and testing it out. We also protect our IP through patenting. To maintain accountability, keep iterating, and continue adapting, we also hold weekly standups where progress is logged and assessed. This is an incredibly fast timeline, but we need this out there because stroke detection should be available for all people.” - Ashmita Kumar, CEO and Co-Founder, CodeBlue.

These inspiring Intel® Liftoff members are driving advancements in AI technology and shaping the industry's future. Intel® Liftoff supports founders with tailored mentorship, connections to global business and tech leaders, and a direct route to top investors. If you are pushing boundaries at the forefront of innovation, read more about how you can join the Intel® Liftoff program for early stage entrepreneurs here.