AI Entrepreneur, May Habib, Amasses Fortune of $285 Million Through Development of Agents Capable of Replacing 90% of Her Workforce
In the heart of 2016, Mai Habib found herself in a critical meeting that would shape her future. A Lebanese-Canadian entrepreneur and tech whiz, she had recently moved to San Francisco from Dubai, presenting her groundbreaking AI-driven translation program to Visa. Desperate for funding in a Series A round, she had to close the deal swiftly.
Visa, planning to launch a digital payment service in over 40 languages, were skeptical about Habib's product. They had only worked with human translators before and didn't grasp how her solution would mesh with their software. Undaunted, Habib and her co-founder Vasim Alshih, sketched a plan on a whiteboard, spotting an inconsistency, and with a stroke of genius, returned home to launch GitHub.
Fast forward, and Visa became Habib's first significant corporate client, securing a $126,000 contract. In a few short months, her startup raised $5 million in investments. "You're not selling software; you're selling a different way to do [familiar] things," she explained, embodying her company's spirit – Writer – which specializes in AI technology. After rapid growth, Writer now offers an AI Studio, a suite of AI tools that swiftly take care of many everyday, yet time-consuming corporate chores.
Cosmetics titan L'Oréal, Uber, and Salesforce, among 300 companies, pay – sometimes eye-watering amounts – to use Writer's custom AI apps for automating monotonous tasks. These clients expect Writer to deliver, with some reporting savings of up to $25 million in the near future. Habib's visionary spirit and Writer's commitment to corporate tasks have raised around $320 million from top venture capitalists.
With an impressive $1.9 billion valuation secured in 2024 and a whopping $285 million in Habib's pockets through shares, Writer is making waves in the corporate world. AI-powered tools have become essential, cutting costs and opening up new opportunities for businesses. A leading health and wellness retailer saved an impressive $5 million annually from using Writer's tools, while Victoria's Secret's lingerie brand AdoreMe translated 2,900 product descriptions into Spanish in just 10 days.
Writer Adds New Product - AI HQ
In a game-changing move, Writer unleashed AI HQ, a suite of tools for creating AI agents that replicate human tasks. Imagine a financial analyst creating an agent to scour call transcripts, analyze earnings data, and send tailored emails to clients – no coding required. Press a button, and the agent does the heavy lifting. Writer also offers over 70 pre-made apps and agents that clients can use immediately, with no prior setup.
Respected fintech company Intuit and homebuilder Lennar have already jumped aboard this innovative product. Lennar's CTO, Scott Spreader, announced that AI agents from Writer have handled thousands of potential buyer queries, scheduling house viewings, and providing pricing and location details – driving volume, activity, and creating better leads.
The Future of AI in Business
The corporate AI market is buzzing, and competition is fierce. Wealthy competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic, with staggering $42 billion in funds, sell base models that enterprises can customize. However, Writer stands out with its user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, requiring no math or perfect prompts, and handling most of the AI magic behind the scenes. Security is paramount; client data is pulled from dedicated servers, ensuring confidential information leaks are minimized.
Though some industry experts question Writer's ability to keep pace with the giants, Habib remains undeterred. Companies prioritize real results over AI championship titles, and with top firms like Accenture, Hilton, Spotify, and Qualcomm on board, investors will continue backing Writer. "She can walk through walls and do the impossible," says board member and investor Rob Tevis. Even those who passed on earlier rounds admit, "She's like an element."
Mai Habib: The Pioneer
Born in a conflict-plagued border village, Habib learned the value of resourcefulness early on. Her father ran a tool-making workshop, while her mother worked in a bakery. Raised as the eldest of eight siblings, Habib managed the family budget from just nine years old. They fled the Syrian civil war to Canada when she was still young, with Habib the only one who could speak English fluently. She graduated from Harvard in 2007, majored in economics, and minored in Eastern languages.
Habib and Alshik launched Qordoba in 2015, focusing on machine translation. They shifted to creating AI that could generate content in a given style and tone in 2020, and rebranded as Writer. Twitter was one of their first clients, using the system for blog post creation. When Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, he stopped paying – resulting in a lawsuit won by Writer, to which Twitter did not respond for comment.
Habib jokes that Writer reinvents itself every four to six months to stay relevant, setting the pace for companies that can't keep up on their own. The next chapter in Writer's story involves a revolutionary new approach to AI that Alshikh calls "self-improvement." His team is working on creating models that learn from their mistakes without human correction – like hiring smart, self-improving employees.
For Habib, this means new opportunities lie ahead, with immense excitement about sharing them with clients. "Even now, the team knows that a whiteboard is a must-have," she say, "I can't think or create with a client without trying to visualize something that doesn't exist yet."
- Mai Habib, the Lebanese-Canadian entrepreneur and tech whiz, presented her groundbreaking AI-driven translation program to Visa in a critical meeting, hoping to secure funding for her startups.
- Desperate for funding in a Series A round, Habib and her co-founder Vasim Alshih sketched a plan on a whiteboard and returned home to launch GitHub, which was later acquired by Visa.
- In a few short months, Habib's startup, Writer, raised $5 million in investments and became Visa's first significant corporate client, securing a $126,000 contract.
- With AI technology as its specialty, Writer offers an AI Studio, a suite of AI tools that swiftly take care of many everyday corporate chores, saving companies millions of dollars.
- AI-powered tools developed by Writer have become essential in the corporate world, opening up new opportunities for businesses by cutting costs and providing innovative solutions for tasks such as translating product descriptions.
