He learned to code for a better computer, built companies around difficult matching problems, and now wants AI tools that leave their users in charge. Imbue’s latest chapter asks whether that principle can shape a company as well as its software.
Kanjun Qiu is the co-founder and CEO of Imbue, a San Francisco AI research lab building agents that reason and code while keeping humans at the helm. A CS grad from MIT who once funded her studies writing high-frequency trading algorithms, she was Dropbox's first chief of staff, co-founded the ML recruiting startup Sourceress, and now runs a lab that raised over $200M (Series B, backers including Nvidia) at a valuation north of $1 billion. She's also a general partner at Outset Capital, a Sequoia Scout, and co-author of Sew Electric, a book that teaches kids computer science through sewing.