Akli Adjaoute, PhD

Founder, President and CEO

Akli Adjaoute is the Founder of Exponion, a venture capital firm that provides cutting-edge startup companies with the financial resources and expertise they need to achieve success. Prior to Exponion, Akli was the founder and CEO of  Brighterion, acquired by Mastercard. Brighterion provides enterprise Al applications for payment service providers, financial institutions, healthcare payers, and merchants. Brighterion’s A.I. solution is trusted by 74 of the top 100 U.S. banks and more than 2,000 customers worldwide, processing over 150+ billion transactions annually. Brighterion is also successfully applied in homeland security, healthcare, anti-money laundering, credit risk, default prediction, and data breach detection. Brighterion has received multiple awards, including the Innovation World Series Award, the Morgan Stanley Fintech Award, the Business Intelligence Group’s 2022 Artificial Intelligence Excellence Award, the U.S. FinTech Award’s 2022 Banking Tech of the Year, the 2021 Business Transformation 150, and the 2020 Fortress Cyber Security Award for Threat Detection.

Before founding Brighterion, Akli Adjaoute was the founder, President, and CEO of Conception En Intelligence Artificielle (Paris, France), developer of MINDSuite, an artificial intelligence platform, combining the power of Smart Agents, Neural Networks, Business Rules, Genetic Algorithms, Constraint Programming, Fuzzy Logic, and Cased-based Reasoning. MINDsuite was successfully applied in Defense, pharmaceuticals, Financials, Decommissioning of Nuclear Facilities, and Healthcare. Conception en Intelligence Artificielle received the Best Technology Company of the year award by 3IA France.

Akli Adjaoute is a renowned academic, speaker, and writer on the subjects of A.I. and security. He served as an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco (USF) and as the Head of the A.I. department and Scientific Committee Chair at EPITA, one of Europe’s leading computer science universities.

Akli Adjaoute has been awarded 20+ patents. He has a master’s degree in computer science from the Université de Technologies de Compiègne and a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence from the University of Pierre & Marie Curie.

Francois Stehlin

Chief Technology Officer

Francois Stehlin is the Chief Technology Officer, where he is responsible for leading the technical strategy and roadmap and oversees Cognitix’s Product Management, Technology Services and Engineering teams.

In addition to his role as Chief Technology Officer, Francois is also in charge of overseeing and maintaining Cognitix’s security policies.

Previously, Francois served as the Chief Technology Officer of Brighterion, where he was leading the technology, security and compliance departments.

Francois has more than 20 years’ experience in artificial intelligence, designing scalable and secure solutions globally. Francois holds a master’s degree in computer science and artificial intelligence from the Ecole pour L’informatique in Paris France.

Florent Gastoud

Head of Data Science

Florent Gastoud is the head of Data Science, where he is responsible for leading the design, strategies, methodologies, and projects for leveraging data to deliver impactful products. Florent is also involved in Cognitix’s product strategy and roadmap.

Florent Gastoud served as the Brighterion director of analytics. In this role, Florent was in charge of all the company’s modeling development functions: fraud prevention, credit risk, chargeback, healthcare fraud, homeland security and anti-money laundering.

Florent has more than 17 years’ experience in artificial intelligence. Florent holds a master degree in computer science and artificial intelligence.

Philippe Hallouin

Director of Analytics

Philippe Hallouin is the Director of analytics, where he is responsible for providing strategic direction on business questions that can be addressed using data and advanced analytic techniques that have a positive impact to patients and families, companies and governments. Philippe Hallouin served as a manager of the Brighterion’s modeling team. In this role, Philippe applied artificial intelligence in securing payment transactions.

Philippe has more than 17 years’ experience in artificial intelligence. Philippe holds a master degree in computer science and artificial intelligence.