Anita Schjøll Abildgaard

Anita Schjøll Abildgaard is the CEO and Co-Founder of Iris.ai, one of the 10 most innovative artificial intelligence companies in 2017 according to Fast Company. Iris.ai is aiming to build the world’s first ‘AI researcher’, and currently offering research discovery and data extraction tools for Academic Research and Corporate R&D. Abildgaard is also Faculty in Artificial Intelligence at Singularity University, and a sought after speaker both locally at the Nordic Executive programs and at a broad range of international Singularity Summits. She has been a member of several boards including the Ulstein Group, Katapult Group, and NORA Startup (Norwegian Artificial Intelligence Research Consortium).

Abildgaard was announced by Forbes to be one of the World’s Top 50 Women in Tech in 2018, and among the Inspiring Fifty Nordics in 2017 and 2019. She throughly enjoys her time on stage, has done two TEDx talks and is a 500 startups, SU Global Grand Challenges Awards and TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield alumni.

Abildgaard has never had what she refers to as “a real job” and Iris.ai is her fourth own startup. The past 10 years of her career have spanned over 9 industries including developing an e-learning tool in Silicon Valley, performing theatre for babies, reducing energy consumption in the process industry through heat exchanger network optimization, getting 30 (mainly middle-age, male) engineers to dance to ABBA in front of their co-workers, facilitating solar light business creation in Kenya, being in the centre of several startups crashing and burning, organizing entrepreneurial conferences and trying to disrupt the recruitment industry. She also dropped by 6 universities on the way. And built a race car.

She believes each and every one of us holds the power to leave this world at least slightly better than we found it.