Mara Foundation Co-Founder Named Among the Top 100 Most Influential People in AI in 2023 by TIME Magazine

Kate Kallot, Co-Founder and former Chief Impact Officer (CIO) at the pan-African cryptocurrency exchange and company, Mara, is among the top 100 most influential people in the world when it comes to Artificial Intelligence, according to TIME Magazine.

Kallot is listed on The TIME Magazine’s Top 100 Most Influential People in AI in 2023 as the founder and CEO of Amini, an innovative Kenyan startup in the AI sector.


Kallot, sitted left alongside the founding Mara team, including CEO, Chi Nnamdi (Centre)

Notable personalities listed include:

• Sam Altman – Founder, OpenAI
• Elon Musk – Founder, xAI
• Demis Hassabis – CEO, Google DeepMind
• Robin Li – CEO, Baidu
• Marc Andreessen – Entrepreneur and Investor
• Jaime Teevan – Chief Scientist, Microsoft
• Jensen Huang – CEO, Nvidia
• Reid Hoffman – Entrepreneur and Investor

According to TIME, Amini is a Nairobi-based startup founded in 2022 which uses satellite imaging and AI to collect and crunch environmental data to understand what’s happening at ground level, down to the square meter.

“The result includes new tools to help people at the grassroots – think smallholder farmers looking to improve their productivity—as well as big companies that will invest in Africa once they have a confident way of tracking these conditions. The result could be transformative,” says Kallot.

“Data is the start of any economic revolution. Our thesis is that one of the reasons why the continent hasn’t been able to develop itself as fast as the Global North is because of the lack of data.”

Kallot’s former company, Mara, has maintained its vision of creating crypto products for African consumers and developers, most notably with the recent launch of a testnet for its highly anticipated Ethereum layer 2 chain, Mara Chain.

While Kallot is well known as the Co-Founder of the Mara cryptocurrency company where she was in charge of token, community, and developer relations, as well as being President of Mara Foundation, the 32-year old Senegalese has confessed that she was a crypto skeptic, until recently.

In an interview in 2022, Kallot explored the moment she discovered the potential for blockchain and cryptocurrencies and eventually ended up founding a crypto exchange.

Before Mara, Kallot served as Head of Emerging Areas at NVIDIA. In this role, she oversaw ecosystem, strategic alliances and developer relations for emerging markets, segments and use cases. She has also worked as Director for AI/ML Ecosystem and Developer Relations at the semi-conductor company, ARM.

Before both roles, she was Director, AI Vision Solutions Ecosystem and Senior Global Manager for AI – Product Line Management at Intel Corporation.