2023, The Year That Was: Dr. Ahmed Al-Ali, Co-Founder, DeepOpinion

Artificial intelligence (AI) and the various innovations in this domain in the UAE were the key topics in focus during Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella’s visit to the UAE capital of Abu Dhabi in November this year. And among the UAE-based AI-focused enterprises that Nadella got to interact with during his time in the country was DeepOpinion, a startup that has built an intelligent automation platform for businesses that helps them to process documents smarter, faster, and easier.

With DeepOpinion’s solutions, companies can put their repetitive processes on autopilot, and have AI do the heavy lifting, while employees can focus on more meaningful and high impact work. With a portfolio of clients that includes names like Siemens, Erste Bank, and Dubai Electricity and Water Authority, organizations have used DeepOpinion’s offering to do everything from processing insurance claims to handling customer service tickets.

Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO of Microsoft, with Dr. Ahmed Al-Ali, co-founder of DeepOpinion. Source: DeepOpinion

Emirati entrepreneur Dr. Ahmed Al-Ali, who is the co-founder of DeepOpinion, got to personally showcase his platform to Nadella during his time in Abu Dhabi; however, this would count as just one of the year’s notable instances for him and his enterprise- after all, there was a threefold increase in DeepOpinion’s revenue in 2023. But it hasn’t been entirely rosy either, Al-Ali admits.

“2023 is the year where all of us at DeepOpinion worked the hardest in our lives, all through days, evenings, and weekends in some cases, to march forward towards our vision,” he shares. “We have had many empty miles where efforts didn’t pan out, and other ones that had a fundamental impact on our success. That said, we now have happy customers that have automated thousands of their repetitive tasks, and they are thus able to focus on meaningful work. Indeed, we grew our revenue by three times in 2023, which places us at a great growth trajectory.”

The DeepOpinion team. Source: DeepOpinion

And that’s why the new year is set to be an exciting one for Al-Ali, who launched DeepOpinion in 2021 with co-founders Stefan Engl (CEO) and Stefan Ramershoven (CRO). According to Al-Ali, 2024 will see DeepOpinion launch a new product that should essentially transform how the rest of us go about our day-to-day work.

“We believe in a future where the workforce will be hybrid between humans and AI collaborating to achieve more and unlocking productivity,” Al-Ali explains. “Imagine a future, where you can onboard an AI colleague, and can delegate tasks to it such as screening resumes, evaluating commercial proposals, reviewing a non-disclosure agreement, or any other such task. This will be what our new product, The AI Co-Worker, does, and we have lined up an ambitious product roadmap for 2024 that we have as our mission to make it a reality. I am very much looking forward to scaling our new product, and putting it in front of as many customers as we can.”

Reflections 2023: Ahmed Al-Ali shares his key insights from the year that was

Don’t settle “I love a short and concise quote by Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio, which has reshaped my perspective and journey: ‘Don’t settle.’ We all have ambitious dreams that we hope will come true one day, but the reality of daily life and complacency with comfort zones limit us. So, my biggest lesson is don’t settle in the face of challenges that life throws at you, but rather, face it with grit, and march towards your goals, because you can’t fail unless you stop trying.”

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