Kanjun Qiu: The AI Founder Leading with Empathy

Before she launched a billion-dollar AI lab, Kanjun Qiu was a first-generation immigrant studying computer science at MIT. To pay her way through school, she wrote high-frequency trading algorithms. Her path didn’t follow the typical VC-backed startup playbook. It was built around curiosity, community, and a deep belief that intelligence should amplify human potential — not replace it.

Kanjun’s story is about more than artificial intelligence. It’s about building systems that unlock progress, asking better questions, and redefining what it means to lead in the most powerful sector of the future.

From MIT to Dropbox’s Inner Circle

Kanjun Qiu was born in China and moved to the U.S. as a child. She attended MIT, where she majored in computer science and worked at the MIT Media Lab. Even as a student, she had a rare mix of technical skill and entrepreneurial instinct.

After graduation, she joined Dropbox as Chief of Staff to CEO Drew Houston. At the time, Dropbox was growing fast. Kanjun helped the company scale from 200 to over 1,200 employees.

Her role was more than operational. She helped build the company’s recruiting systems, onboarding frameworks, and internal strategy. She worked closely with executive leadership, learning how to run a high-growth company from the inside.

But she didn’t want to just help others build. She wanted to start something of her own.

In 2015, she co-founded Sourceress, a recruiting startup that used machine learning to help companies find talent. The company was backed by Y Combinator, Initialized Capital, and the founders of Dropbox.

Even then, Kanjun was thinking bigger than recruiting. She wanted to understand how people make decisions—and how intelligent systems could help.

Redefining AI from the Ground Up

After Sourceress, she began to explore a deeper question. What if artificial intelligence could reason the way humans do?

In 2021, she launched Imbue, a research-driven AI company focused on building agents that can think, reason, and collaborate with humans. Unlike many other labs focused on scaling language models, Imbue was designed from the ground up to explore long-term reasoning and decision-making.

Kanjun’s goal was not to create another chatbot. She wanted to build tools that would help people think better and work more effectively.

To do that, Imbue created its own research environment called Avalon—a reinforcement learning world built to train agents faster and more efficiently than anything else on the market.

By 2023, investors took notice. Imbue raised a $200 million Series B led by Astera Institute, with participation from Nvidia, Amazon’s Alexa Fund, Eric Schmidt, and Kyle Vogt. The round brought the company’s valuation to over $1 billion.

But Kanjun wasn’t focused on hype. She was focused on building a company that would last.

A House Built for Builders

Before launching Imbue, Kanjun co-founded The Archive, a coliving house in San Francisco where engineers, artists, and thinkers lived and worked together. It wasn’t just a place to crash—it was a community designed for creative and intellectual growth.

This same philosophy shaped how she built Imbue. The company operates like a hybrid between a research lab and a startup. Every employee is treated as a creative contributor, not just a line on an org chart.

She believes in clarity, autonomy, and intellectual honesty. Her teams are small, focused, and deeply aligned on the company’s mission.

Kanjun doesn’t see AI as a race to scale. She sees it as a long-term investment in building systems that matter.

Where She Is Today

Today, Kanjun continues to lead Imbue as CEO. The company is one of the most respected independent AI labs in the world.

Its research spans reasoning, planning, reinforcement learning, and safe deployment. It’s not just about building models. It’s about designing infrastructure for the next generation of intelligence.

Outside of Imbue, Kanjun is a partner at Outset Capital and a Sequoia Scout. She quietly supports other deep tech founders building in difficult and important areas. She also writes publicly about intelligence, philosophy, and the human side of AI.

Her work is shaping how we think about intelligence—not just artificial, but human too.

Kanjun’s story isn’t just about agents or algorithms. It’s about creating systems that help people do their best thinking. And it's about staying focused on what matters, even when the world is chasing the next big thing.

Five Leadership Lessons from Kanjan Qiu

1. Follow your curiosity.
Kanjun’s career began with simple but powerful questions. Her best ideas came from things she couldn’t stop thinking about.

2. Build your environment.
She didn’t wait for the perfect setup. She built The Archive and Imbue to support the kind of work she wanted to do.

3. Think long-term.
Imbue’s success comes from focusing on fundamental questions — not short-term trends or media cycles.

4. Own the system.
From recruiting to research to fundraising, she takes full responsibility for building systems that work.

5. Help others thrive.
She creates spaces where people can do their best work, whether inside her company or in the broader founder ecosystem.

Jenny’s Takeaway

Kanjun Qiu is building something that doesn’t exist yet—and doing it in a way that prioritizes depth over speed.

Her work reminds us that real innovation comes from asking better questions and creating environments where people can pursue them fully.

In a field full of noise, she is quietly building the next foundation for how we’ll work, think, and live alongside machines.

That’s the kind of leadership that shapes the future.