Kanjun Qiu

Very few women have cofounded AI companies worth over $1B. She’s one of them.

Kanjun Qiu is not interested in competing with OpenAI or Anthropic.

She believes that intelligence should be transparent, collaborative, and empowering.

Her mission? Revive the original dream of the personal computer: software that works for you and adapts to you.

Not by replacing human intelligence, but by enhancing it.

Her company, Imbue, builds foundation models specifically optimized for reasoning, using a 10,000+ GPU H100 cluster from NVIDIA.

These models are the basis for Imbue’s full-stack development approach, which includes training, prototyping, infrastructure, and theoretical research.

The result is a new class of AI agents that can code, solve problems, explain their logic, and build trust with their users.

This idea has attracted over $200M in funding, from backers like NVIDIA, the Astera Institute, Notion cofounder Simon Last, and Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt.

If AI is going to become part of everyday life, Qiu argues users need to be in control.

Before launching Imbue, Qiu already had a track record of building at the intersection of technology, culture, and human potential.

She studied computer science at MIT, where she paid her way by writing high-frequency trading algorithms and worked at the MIT Media Lab on hardware and design.

She also co-authored “Sew Electric,” a book that teaches middle and high school students how to code using sewable electronics.

After graduation, she joined Dropbox as Chief of Staff to CEO Drew Houston, helping the company scale from 200 to over 1,200 employees.

In 2015, she co-founded Sourceress, an AI-powered recruiting startup that went through Y Combinator and raised $13M.

Her goal was to improve hiring, make it more inclusive, data-informed, and human-centered.

Around the same time, she co-founded The Archive, a co-living house in San Francisco.

Residents went on to found companies like Anthropic, Bluesky, and Imbue itself.

Others ran for public office.

Today, Qiu is not only building Imbue; she’s investing in others.

As a General Partner at Outset Capital, she backs “kind and capable” early-stage founders, alongside Ali Rohde and Josh Albrecht.

Ultimately, for Qiu, AI is not about replicating human minds.

It’s about building tools that help humans reach further.

She believes the real leap in AI isn’t just more compute or larger models, it’s creating systems that allow people to understand and shape their tools in ways that reflect their own values, goals, and creativity.