AI Hot 100 Spotlight: Piramidal AI
Introducing Piramidal AI - one of the Hot 100 startups selected by The AI Furnace, with Kris Pahuja (Co-founder) speaking at The AI Hot 100 Conference.
Founders: Dimitris Fotis Sakelleriou (PhD Neuroengineering and Applied Machine Learning, ex-Senior AI Engineer IQVIA) and Kris Pahuja (ex-Google and Spotify).
What does Piramidal do? The Piramidal team is building a foundation model trained on brainwave data, i.e. Electroencephalography (EEG) to support doctors to understand what brain waves are telling us.
Mission: From diagnostics to wellbeing, the company’s mission is to build technology that bridges the gap between research and real-world EEG applications. Today, their first product cuts down the time to review EEG from hours to seconds and makes it easier for early detection for diagnostics.
Funding: Piramidal is a YC W24 company, they raised $6M in seed funding with participation from Lionheart Ventures.
Want to see Piramidal AI in action? See Kris Pahuja (Co-Founder) speak at The AI Hot 100 Conference.
Q&A with Kris Pahuja, Co-Founder
Did you always know you wanted to be an entrepreneur? Were there any other businesses you worked on in the past?
Yes! I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs and from my father to grandfather and knew that’s what I always wanted to do. I have always been dabbling with entrepreneurship since I was a kid with a few small ventures before we officially kicked off Piramidal.
Tell us more about Piramidal and what was the inspiration behind it?
Piramidal is the largest brain foundation model to exist. Our model is able to perform a varsity of tasks around the brain from diagnosis to well-being. Dimitris’s mission has been to translate brain language using AI and he started the first version of what Piramidal is now during his PhD. I have been fascinated by wave-form time series data since my Spotify days.
How did you meet your co-founder? Do you have any advice for entrepreneurs looking for a co-founder?
Dimitris and I met in Paris chatting about music and realized our mutual interests. We decided to partner up shortly after without the traditional co-founder 50 questions workshops and it has worked really well so far! We both had a gut feeling that this would work because we instantly clicked. My advice to others would be to rely more on the qualitative feeling than to go over some checklist - same as dating!
What are some brutal truths about entrepreneurship that you wish you knew before starting?
You always hear about how many hours you’ll work on it but you truly don’t realize it until you’re in it. For us, the startup is always on our mind and we spend way more time in the office than we anticipated. So even though we knew it, it didn’t really hit us until we were in it. But we love it at the same time!
Where do you think the medical field will be 20 years from now with AI? Can you describe how Piramidal would contribute to this future?
20 years from now, the doctor's operational job will be fully automated. Doctors will only be involved in the final decision making and machines will do the rest. Additionally, subjectivity from diagnosis and treatment will go away with every person having personalized treatment. With Piramidal, doctors will be able to have a full understanding with precision and quantification of our brains.
Who’s going to find the most value in what you’re building with Piramidal?
Hospitals, doctors and pharma companies to start but also every day consumer down the line. We envision a future where consumers will be able to fully understand their own brain to make every day decisions.
What is the most surprising thing you found out about the industry you’ve gone into?
How antiquated everything in hospitals is. Having worked previously in big tech and forward thinking companies, I’m surprised to see how behind healthcare is in terms of innovation.
The AI industry is moving super fast. As a founder, how do you keep up with this for your startup?
We try to turn off the noise and focus on what we are building! But we do keep a close eye on all the science coming out that is closely applicable to us and spend dedicated time weekly to stay on top of it.
How was your transition from Big Tech into startup entrepreneurship?
Very different! At Google I learned a lot about all the cool innovation and working with external partners but the seed at which we need to move at the startup is nowhere close to how we worked at Google. Also, the sense of urgency is a lot more when your decisions have direct consequences whereas at Google, we always knew Google search will always bring in the bulk of the revenue.
When building an AI startup like Piramidal, what is the importance and balance between technical vs non technical skills for the team make-up?
In the early days, it’s very important to be very technical. Dimitris is very technical and all our early hires have all been engineers and will continue to be the bulk of hiring. I do a lot of the non technical work but even I have spent the better part of my career in product management building fairly technical products. I think post series A is when we can start to ramp up some of the non technical hires.
How can The AI Furnace community support you?
We love community! We love the events hosted by The AI Furnace and the opportunity provided by you to meet very smart people and also potential candidates. It’s also an honor to be a part of the Hot 100 startups!
