TIME Magazine awarded CEO and Co-Founder Karim Beguir a TIME100 Impact Award for leading InstaDeep’s work to help communities and business tackle tough problems with AI.
Karim was honoured at a gala ceremony in Dubai on February 11, 2024, alongside Meta’s Chief AI Scientist and Turing Prize winner Yann LeCun, AI ethicist Kay Firth-Butterfield and AI artist Songwen Chung. The TIME100 Impact Awards recognise leaders who, through sustained effort, have done extraordinary work to shape the future of their industries and the world at large, according to the editors of the influential global news weekly.
InstaDeep uses its AI to work with mRNA vaccine-maker BioNTech, which acquired InstaDeep in 2023, as well as Europe’s largest rail operator, Deutsche Bahn, to reduce delays and carbon emissions and the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation to predict devastating locusts outbreaks.
TIME Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs presented the award, saying Karim and InstaDeep “are helping accelerate progress towards an AI-first world that benefits us all.”
“Empower the world with AI”: Read TIME’s profile of Karim
“InstaDeep is an AI company, but it’s also an idea driven by human values,” Beguir told the audience at the Museum of the Future in Dubai, accepting the award (watch his speech in the video above). “From the beginning, my co-founder Zohra Slim and I focused on empowering young talent in Africa and beyond, creating a path for them to participate in the global conversation around AI and deep tech innovation. And yes, it was hard.”
Karim dedicated the award to his father, as a young doctor, who after studying in France, chose to move the family to remote Tataouine on the edge of the Sahara –the area in Tunisia near where movie director George Lucas shot Star Wars– because it was where patients needed care most.
Karim returned to Tunisia and Tataouine because he too wanted to have an impact. “Now that the path is there,” he said, “we hope many innovators, in Africa and beyond, will follow.”
“Human values”: Read TIME’s story on Karim’s speech
If our mission and values resonate, consider joining us! InstaDeep is hiring: Instadeep.com/careers
