Humza Ahmed arrived at the University of Waterloo with his sights set on the stars, planning a future in aerospace engineering. That path shifted after a series of co-op placements and deep involvement with the school's startup community. Today, Ahmed is the CEO of Automax.ai, a company that is changing how the real estate industry handles home appraisals.
The inspiration for the business came from his own family. During a series of conversations with cousins who worked in real estate, he identified a clear bottleneck in the appraisal process. Industry professionals spent excessive hours typing and formatting reports, often outsourcing the work overseas. Ahmed realized there was a better way to handle this data.
Automax.ai provides a mobile app that allows homeowners to scan properties using LiDAR and computer vision. The system captures precise measurements and thousands of data points to generate a report. By moving this process from a manual, multi-week timeline to a automated 24-hour turnaround, the company has attracted interest from lenders, insurers, and homeowners across North America.
The transition from a university project to a venture-backed company happened quickly. After completing Y Combinator, the company secured over $5 million in funding. This capital allowed Ahmed to move operations to San Francisco to scale the platform. Despite the move, he continues to pull his talent pool directly from the University of Waterloo, citing the university's co-op program as a major driver for his success.
Ahmed credits his time in the Enterprise Co-op program and various pitch competitions for teaching him how to communicate value to investors. He advises current students to take advantage of the six co-op work terms available to them. His perspective is that these semesters provide a low-risk environment to test ideas, solve real problems, and build functional products before entering the market full-time.