Founder & CEO — ATAS, Alliance for Transformative AI Systems
IRANKUNDA Elyssa
I build AI companies that understand Rwanda — its languages, geography, and everyday realities. Today that means AcademiaPlus, national curriculum infrastructure entering schools this term, and IMIZI, our long-term contextual intelligence program.
Role
Founder & CEO, ATAS
Based
Kigali, Rwanda
Founded
ATAS · 2025
Focus
Rwanda-first AI infrastructure
Why I'm doing this
I started paying attention the day I watched my father ask AI for advice on a problem only he actually understood — and get back an answer that could have been written for anyone, anywhere.
By then, AI had gotten fluent in Kinyarwanda. That was never really the problem. Speaking a language and understanding how things actually work in a place are two different achievements — and only one of them was getting solved.
Right now
I'm ATAS's only full-time person, so most days move between writing research notes, debugging a model, and answering a support email — in that order, sometimes twice.
Outside ATAS
Rwanda is home in the literal sense — it's where I grew up, and "Rwanda-first" isn't an abstraction I chose, it's the only version of this problem I actually know from the inside.
The company I founded
Alliance for Transformative AI Systems — defining our own AI future through systems that understand our realities.
I founded ATAS in Kigali to build AI systems that genuinely understand Rwanda — its languages, geography, culture, and the way Rwandans actually live, work, and communicate. We run research and product as one pipeline.
AcademiaPlus
Entering schools this term
National curriculum infrastructure for Rwandan secondary education.
IMIZI
Active research
Rwanda's first Contextual Intelligence Infrastructure.
Language research
Ongoing
Kinyarwanda speech recognition and understanding, built natively.
Building AI that understands Rwanda.
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What I'm building
Selected ventures and research programs from ATAS.
Notes from building
What I'm learning while building ATAS — research notes, product decisions, and lessons.
Let's build something that matters
Partnerships, speaking invitations, collaboration with schools, or press — email is the fastest way to reach me directly.