Founder and CEO of Kera Health Platforms
A Senegalese AI researcher who led Google's AI Center in Accra, founded Africa's first machine intelligence master's program, and now builds AI health insurance at Kera.
Moustapha Cissé is a Senegalese AI researcher and entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Kera Health Platforms. TIME's 2026 TIME100 AI profile describes him as a former Facebook and Google AI researcher. He grew up in Senegal, left Africa for higher education, and worked at Facebook in Europe while waiting for the right opportunity to return.
In June 2018 Google announced its first AI research center in Africa, in Accra, Ghana, with him as Staff Research Scientist and Lead of Google AI Center Accra. He also founded and directs the African Master's in Machine Intelligence, a one-year program at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences that TIME describes as the continent's first machine learning master's. He told MIT Technology Review that the future of machine-learning research is in Africa. He later founded Kera, first aiming to gather scattered health records so doctors could diagnose faster, and after raising a $3 million pre-seed round, launched Sura in September 2024, an AI health insurance company that approves claims within 30 seconds through WhatsApp and sends any claim it would reject to human review. Kera raised $10 million from the International Finance Corporation, and Sura covers tens of thousands of people and launched in Ivory Coast in 2026.
Named Staff Research Scientist and Lead of Google AI Center Accra, Google's first AI research center in Africa, announced in June 2018 to work with local universities and policymakers on healthcare, agriculture and education.
Founded and directs the African Master's in Machine Intelligence, a one-year program at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences that TIME describes as the continent's first machine learning master's.
Through Kera, launched Sura in September 2024, an AI-driven health insurance company that approves claims within 30 seconds over WhatsApp and routes claims it would reject to humans; Kera raised $10 million from the International Finance Corporation.
Profiled in TIME's 2026 TIME100 AI list.
Co-authored mixup, a data augmentation method that trains neural networks on convex combinations of pairs of examples.