Karim Beguir

InstaDeep, the AI company founded by this Tunisian entrepreneur, is one of the tech world's most promising.

Karim Beguir, 47, grew up in Tataouine, on the edge of the Tunisian desert, not far from where Star Wars was filmed. The son of a Tunisian doctor and a French history and geography teacher, he studied at the prestigious École Polytechnique before embarking on a brilliant career as a financier with J.P. Morgan, dividing his time between London and New York. But… “How do you want to be remembered?” I asked myself. “So I gave it all up”, he told La Jaune et la Rouge, the Ecole Polytechnique alumni magazine. In 2014, he returned to Tataouine and, with his partner Zohra Slim, founded InstaDeep, a pioneer in AI and digital innovation that leverages advanced AI for real-world problems. They partnered with the German railways, Deutsche Bahn, to revolutionise the country’s national rail system as part of their Digitale Schiene Deutschland initiative. Then in 2020, during the pandemic, InstaDeep partnered with BioNTech, the German Messenger RNA vaccine laboratory: the company modelled future variants of the Covid-19 virus before they even appeared! “I've never been afraid of taking risks, and I've always wanted to make people the focus of every scientific project.” In January 2023, InstaDeep, which started with two computers and $2,000 in capital, was bought out for $700 million by BioNTech! It opened offices in Europe, the United States, the Emirates and, of course, in Africa: in Tunisia, Lagos, Johannesburg and Kigali. “It's a real meritocracy where everyone plays their part”, he says. “Bringing people from different cultures together is a source of enrichment and great creativity”, stresses the entrepreneur, who intends building “a world in which AI benefits everyone”.