Ventures
ChAI
Founder / CEO
ChAI has built the world’s first insurance products for raw material price risk—turning one of the largest and most uncontrollable forces in the global economy into something businesses can actively manage.
For decades, the ability to anticipate and hedge commodity price movements has been concentrated inside investment banks and hedge funds. Meanwhile, the companies that actually produce, manufacture, and build have been left exposed—absorbing volatility after the fact, or navigating complex financial instruments never designed for them.
ChAI changes that.
Using state-of-the-art AI, we forecast movements in energy, food, and industrial materials—then convert those forecasts into simple, accessible insurance products that pay out when costs rise. No trading desks. No derivatives expertise. Just direct protection against volatility.
At a time of geopolitical instability, fragile supply chains, and persistent inflation, this is no longer optional. Businesses need a way to stabilise costs before shocks hit—not after.
ChAI makes that possible.
This is a new category: making real-world economic risk insurable, not just observable.
Thought Machine
Founding Team · Unicorn
Modern economies depend on banking systems that are reliable, responsive, and able to adapt in real time—yet much of the world still runs on infrastructure built decades ago. Thought Machine replaces these legacy systems with cloud-native platforms, enabling banks to operate with the speed, flexibility, and resilience of modern software.
Its technology now underpins core banking systems at several tier-1 institutions globally.
FrontierAlpha
Private beta — get in touch if you’d like access
An AI labour-market intelligence system tracking how research, open-source activity, startup formation and hiring demand move together. Built to surface structural shifts in the AI landscape before they show up in headlines.
Horrorsight
Live Product
Most recommendation systems optimise for popularity, not taste—leaving much of the most interesting content hidden. Horrorsight uses AI to uncover cult and underseen horror films, surfacing highly specific styles, atmospheres, and niches.
A demonstration of how intelligent systems can reshape discovery in creative domains.
Internews
Board Member
Internews works to ensure people everywhere have access to trusted, independent information. In an increasingly uncertain world, the flow of reliable information is not a luxury—it is essential to safety, stability, and functioning societies. When information breaks down, so does trust, coordination, and the ability to respond to crises. Internews addresses this at its core.
Working across 40+ countries, it supports local media, civic actors, and information networks to ensure that accurate, relevant information reaches the people who need it most—particularly in fragile and rapidly changing environments.
The result is stronger, more resilient communities that are better able to navigate uncertainty, make informed decisions, and remain connected to the world around them.
Informed Actions
Co-founder
An earlier venture exploring how machine learning could optimise ambulance dispatch for South Africa’s largest emergency medical service. The project applied predictive models to reduce response times—demonstrating how AI can be embedded into real-world systems to improve outcomes where it matters most.
Invinio
Founder
A previous venture focused on bringing quantitative rigour to fine wine investment. Invinio combined pricing data across 10,000+ wines with portfolio construction and optimisation tools—demonstrating how data and machine learning can bring structure and discipline to previously unstructured asset classes.
Water Purification in the Developing World
Humanitarian Engineering
Access to clean water is one of the most basic yet persistent global challenges, with direct consequences for health, productivity, and quality of life. This project explored a hand-powered purification device designed for use in environments with limited infrastructure—aiming to deliver safe water where it is needed most.
It reflects a broader idea: that thoughtful engineering and innovation, applied in the right way, can fundamentally transform everyday life for millions of people.
Many of these ventures draw on machine learning techniques covered in Tristan's free tutorials — including Support Vector Machines and Kalman Filters. See also his academic publications on AI for finance and healthcare.