About Us
Vision
Safari AI’s Vision for the future is simple but ambitious: Automate Action. We know managers and front line staff in every physical operation are overburdened with manual tasks that should already be automated away. The result will be staff and managers focused on the most important part of their business: the welfare of the customer they’re serving.
Achieving missions get Safari AI and its clients closer to realizing this Vision.
In 2023, we built the industry’s leading, proprietary AI-empowered data engine that can ingest clients’ video feed, recognize objects (e.g. people and vehicles) and their behavior, and their relation with space and time – all in real-time. The engine converts video feed into valuable business metrics, insights and alerts, automating and improving daily operations. Safari AI’s platform is now deployed by global leaders in the Theme Park & Attractions, QSR, Live Venue, Retail, Commercial Real Estate and other industries.
Our Mission
Today, Safari AI’s Mission is to drive Speed of Service for its clients using Safari Scores as the benchmark for operational excellence. These scores enable operators to easily understand the performance of their operations in real-time.
By year-end 2024, Safari AI will generate AI-enabled Recommendations to clients’ operating managers & staff based on what the AI observes is working best and what’s not working. By developing and iterating a Virtual SOP, clients get one step closer to Automating Action.
Leadership Team
Ali Vahabzadeh
Ali founded Chariot, the first app-enabled mass transit service in San Francisco in 2014 which served thousands of daily commuters. Upon selling it to the Ford Motor Company, the service expanded to several US and European cities and an enterprise business where over 75 companies used the service as a twice-daily perk for employees.
Ali turned his attention to computer vision and AI as a solution for enabling better real-time operations and guest service across a number of industries by co-founding Safari AI in 2022.
Ali earned a B.S. in Economics cum laude from Vanderbilt University and lives in New York with his wife and two boys.
Kaiwen Yuan
Kaiwen was the founding member of Serve Robotics (Nasdaq: SERV), which is the world’s first L4 autonomous sidewalk robot. Previously owned by Postmates then acquired by and spun-off of by Uber, Kaiwen built the fundamentals of the autonomy and machine learning stack. He led the perception, prediction and machine learning teams and was responsible for several of the company’s KPIs.
Kaiwen holds a PhD in AI and Robotics from the University of British Columbia and lives in Vancouver with his wife and their cat, Storm.