Robin AI, the legal AI assistant, has appointed Carina Negreanu, Ph.D as Vice President of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Negreanu joins from Microsoft, where she was Principal Research Manager after spending six years at the global giant.
Negreanu will head up the R&D activities at Robin AI. She will help align the R&D of AI and machine learning with its product roadmap and commercial objectives. Her remit will also be generative AI, an area that Robin AI has already started working on with integration to Claude 3, Anthropic’s latest model, earlier this year. The appointment comes a few months after the company raised £26 million in a funding round led by Temasek.
James Clough, CTO and Co-Founder of Robin AI, said, “Carina has made a name for herself as one of the leading thinkers around the application of AI to everyday technology. We were impressed by her R&D work on improving staple Microsoft products and saw an obvious opportunity for her to bring her expertise over to the legal sector, where Word and Excel are the default tech tools for millions of legal professionals.
“Successful AI companies have to manage the dual focus of developing practical products that improve customers’ working lives, while also paying close attention to the ever-evolving technology landscape. This is the skill set Carina brings to the table.”
Who is Carina Negreanu
This is only Negreanu’s second role in a commercial firm. She joined Microsoft as an AI resident in 2018 before rising quickly to become Principal Research Manager. During her time at Microsoft, she worked on helping to build its Copilot for Excel. With a focus on developing solutions for non-technical users.
Prior to joining Microsoft, she studied at Cambridge University for eight years. She first obtained a Master’s degree in Astrophysics. Going on to complete her Doctorate on modifying gravity, exploring alternative theories of gravity to Einstein’s General Relativity.
Negreanu commented, “I’m hugely excited to be joining Robin AI. It’s one of the few AI companies truly walking the walk, building real products to solve real customer problems, and doing so in a sector where the entry bar for AI products is very high, with no margin for error.
“AI has the power to transform how we all work and drive a step-change in productivity, but it’s vital that the products coming to market are accessible, intuitive and deliver genuine value. This is my core focus as a researcher, and I’m looking forward to applying my knowledge to the legal sector and helping further develop Robin AI’s product roadmap.”
Enterprise Times: what does this mean
The recent funding has helped Robin AI to attract some top talent to its leadership team in recent months. The prominent AI journalist and author Ryan Heath was appointed Head of Communications. Tech industry veteran Scott Casey joined as CFO.
Negreanu also joins at a time when 35% of the management of Robin AI is female. An above-average figure for the industry. The role will also come with wider responsibility than she had at Microsoft. It will be interesting to see how her career develops in the future. Can she help steer product development in ground-breaking ways that will either see Robin AI grow exponentially or make it attractive as an acquisition target?
