AI female founder Suhayya Abu-Hakima on success with no VC backing

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Immigrants to Canada at times take the route of founding a private business, an important driver of the country’s economy. In addition, it can be a unique path for female leaders in private business.

Suhayya “Sue” Abu-Hakima, co-founder and chief executive of Ottawa-based AI safety and security firm Alstari Corp., is a pioneering technology entrepreneur and inventor of artificial intelligence (AI) applications for wireless communication and computer security.

At a time when it is notoriously difficult for female founders to secure funding, she co-founded and exited two companies.

Here, Abu-Hakima recalls her family’s immigration to Canada from the Middle East, the excitement of seeing the Habs win the Stanley Cup five times, and the promise and dangers of AI.

Can you share your memories of your experience as a child coming from the Middle East to Canada?

“I recall coming to Montreal. At the time, my sisters and I were with my Mom, Dr. Aida S. Arif, an archaeologist.

We arrived at Dorval Airport and the [Canada Border Services Agency] officer who interviewed my mother was very kind.

He asked questions and then stamped her papers and all our passports and then we were met by my father, Dr. Ahmad M. Abu-Hakima, a historian.

My parents were coming to be professors at McGill University while their kids were going to school in Montreal.

We already spoke English, Arabic and French so we were all set for Canada. We had been warned about the snow and we found it magical and we learned to ski.

We also loved hockey and the Habs. I learned to skate. The Montreal Canadiens won the Stanley Cup five times in my first decade in Montreal.”

How were those early years?

“We acclimatized quickly over the first few years. We had been well travelled and were well educated and integrated well into Montreal life.

I was in Grade 7, which had many other new immigrants and some third- and fourth-generation Canadians. We used to meet up and play soccer, Frisbee and touch football in the summer. We skated on ice rinks in the winter. My sister and I became lifeguards at the local YMCA … and we spent most summers at the pool. I also became a camp counsellor and ran the aquatics side of camp.

We did well at school, as we had been well prepared before coming to Canada. My parents’ belief was that education equals freedom, which is what you can expect from two university professors. Their view was that your home and any material wealth can disappear in war, while your knowledge stays with you.”

How did your education choices shape your career trajectory?

“My mother wanted all her children to be doctors, so we were steered towards STEM early on.

We all did very well at school. My Mom did get two PhDs and one medical doctor. When I applied to McGill to go to university … [I] graduated in three years with a Bachelor of Engineering from McGill.

I combined communications and computing courses and ended up in telecommunications. I also played intramural hockey at McGill, which was awesome. I worked for five years, moving to Ottawa, and then caught the AI bug in 1985. I worked in the AI group at Bell Northern Research (BNR).

I also entered a master’s program at Carleton University in AI, straddling Computer Engineering and Computer Science with the encouragement of my manager at BNR at the time. He wanted someone on his team with real telecoms experience who also knew AI.

When I finished my AI master’s in getting computers to generate explanations, I wanted to continue in AI and looked for a job.

Fortunately, the National Research Council decided to start a lab in AI in their EE Division, which had a lab for intelligent systems back in 1987. I joined the lab and worked on aircraft engine diagnosis and caught the bug to complete a PhD in AI.

I developed a generic object-based AI machine learning program that can take knowledge of how engine systems fail and leverage real-world background semantic knowledge, combined with testing and repair knowledge, to induce how those systems work.

I applied my thesis work to an aircraft engine and at the suggestion of my thesis supervisor, I also applied it to a coffee maker, as he thought my examiners would have trouble understanding the aircraft engine example.

I graduated with honours with my PhD in 1994.”

When did you feel your entrepreneurial spirit first spark?

“I recall at NRC we often met with industry, as we wanted to ensure we were working on real-world problems. I recall a meeting with the [Ottawa-based software firm] Crosskeys CEO and his team and we discussed with them how we could apply AI to their telecoms solutions.

I decided after that meeting and with the encouragement of my brother Ihab Abu-Hakima, who was a Silicon Valley entrepreneur at the time, telling me I should be doing an AI startup for aircraft companies … (my brother passed away prematurely, sadly, in 2021 but I know he is always looking out for us proudly).

My NRC president at the time was encouraging senior officers to do startups (I had become an AI lab head by now, with 25 team members bridging NRC and university and industry). I had also published over 100 papers in AI on topics such as diagnosis, intelligent agents, AI in distributed computing, AI in messaging and user interfaces, as well as the importance of context for reasoning in AI.”

What brought you to establish your first company, and were you nervous at all?

“I became restless at NRC and with the encouragement of family and friends and NRC management, I decided to launch [and co-found] my first startup [Kanata-based] AmikaNow! from NRC. At the time, in 1999, I saw this incredible amount of information coming at us daily. My inbox was already at 100 emails a day and 25 additional spam.

I wanted to be able to travel to meet customers and have the urgent and prioritized messages reach me on my mobile device. We applied AI to message content and, through content analysis, we were able to reduce one page of email (about 250 words) to a summary paragraph of 250 characters (a tweet or X message in today’s terminology).

We met with one of the big telecoms in Canada and they asked us to prototype the service for their customers. We showed them the results in 2000 but they decided to pass.

We leveraged our generic AI content analysis engine … for privacy protection. Banks loved the product and Entrust purchased our compliance business in 2004. By that time, we had filed over 20 AI patents related to automatic summarization, classification, knowledge representation and reasoning, as well as visualization.

And, yes, as an entrepreneur, you are always nervous and trying to avoid panic attacks. The only way around it is to get organized, do sports, meditate and take up yoga and make time with family and friends. Hard to do but essential for entrepreneurs. I talk about this in my upcoming book about the lessons learned in launching and successfully exiting two AI startups. My book will likely be the market by early 2024.”

Can you share your greatest challenges and triumphs in business so far?

“Challenges included the impossibility of raising VC money, especially for women. It was challenging finding the best hires, getting and keeping customers, keeping up with innovation expectations, and protecting intellectual property by patenting and keeping competitors at bay.

Triumphs included two successful AI startup exits, forming incredible teams both at NRC and with two great start-up teams, and building and sustaining AI companies when AI was not an area investors wanted to touch.

Only [about 10 per cent] of [startups] succeed and we succeeded with two startups successfully exiting to two NASDAQ-traded companies, Entrust [Corp.] and Genasys [Inc.]. Pretty damn good for someone not VC backed.”

People are fascinated but perplexed by AI. What is important for us to grasp about the responsible use of it?

“AI has incredible potential to help humanity with all sorts of problems, including climate change, getting off the planet, cancer treatment, personalized medicine, agriculture, forest fires, etc.

AI allows us to make billions of decisions in microseconds, and it’s being applied to the knowledge economy in every industry, including finance, imaging, entertainment, and more.

AI also has the potential to end humanity if it is left unbridled. Countries all over the world are quickly trying to implement safety standards to minimize the hazards to humanity.

Criminals are already using AI for malware, fraud, identity theft, and every other criminal activity you can think of.

Canada is implementing Bill C-27 to bring the abuse of AI into the criminal code.

The challenge will continue to be that AI can re-write AI. How do you stop AI in that situation?

My new company Alstari will focus on AI and security. A key focus will be on advising organizations, including corporations and governments, on the safe use of AI.”

Are there any responsible uses of AI that you’re seeing in any particular industry that are exciting to you?

“I have always been intrigued by avatars and intelligent agents. As an entrepreneur I often go around asking for multiple versions of myself or a set of Suhayya intelligent agents to help me address any of the tasks I encounter. I have been thinking about and doing R&D on intelligent agents for decades.

I will continue to work on these ideas that will allow me to bring such exciting capabilities to the forefront and potentially support all my activities.”

Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.

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