May Habib

Writer is a full stack generative AI company for the enterprise.

May Habib is the co-founder and CEO of Writer, a full stack generative AI company for the enterprise. Writer counts global leaders like Mars and Fortune 500 companies including Salesforce, Uber, Vanguard, Accenture, L’Oreal, and Intuit among its customer base. 

Balderton first invested in Writer’s Series B in September 2023, and the company announced a $150M Series C in November 2024.

Tell us a little more about what you’re doing at Writer? 

Writer is a full stack generative AI company for the enterprise. We’re not just creating models that can execute tasks, we’re working directly with enterprises to develop advanced AI systems that understand and interact with their environment to deliver mission-critical work. 

We believe that for enterprises, competitive advantage in generative AI is going to come not from two or three AI applications, but hundreds and thousands of AI workflows. They’re going to be using AI in many different applications, across different departments, and for quite different use cases. Rather than buying a bunch of separate siloed solutions for each of these, it makes far more sense to have a single platform to build, maintain and manage all of those applications. 

That’s really what so many of our customers love about Writer – the ability to build super targeted AI solutions across every aspect of the business, all under one roof. 

You started building Writer in early 2020, and since then AI has really catapulted into the spotlight. What has that journey been like for you? 

Honestly, it’s felt like a really consistent sense of innovating at breakneck speed. I remember when my co-founder Waseem and I first discovered Transformers, in about late 2019 while working on our previous business, and we realised how incredible the potential for generative AI was going to be. That was a really special moment in time: nobody else was really working toward this, but we were on the cusp of unlocking this massive opportunity. 

We started Writer in January 2020, and that first year was really about answering the existential questions. Were we a consumer or an enterprise company? How were we actually going to productise this technology? Our previous company sold to large enterprises, including customers like Visa, so ultimately we felt we understood that space really deeply and could build meaningful products and solutions within that area. 

Since then it’s really been an incredible few years. The pace has been remarkable, and both we and our customers continue to be swept away by how truly powerful the technology is and the impact it can have. 

Writer has an impressive customer base of global leaders and Fortune 500 companies. In your experience, what are some of the challenges organisations face when it comes to integrating AI into the workplace? 

When generative AI burst on the scene in 2022, there was huge excitement about how powerful this technology could be and the potential it held for the automation of a range of different tasks across an enterprise. But the reality is that transformation can’t happen over night. 

As a large company, there are rules and regulations, and certain levels of quality and standards that you need to adhere to. How do you ensure that you’re deploying AI and tackling automation in a reliable, trustworthy way that is also scalable and consistent across the business? 

In particular data and data security is of the utmost concern. When you think about the sheer volume of data involved, and the multitude of applications and workflows, it’s absolutely vital that you’re tackling this in a safe, secure and compliant manner and that you have total trust and transparency with the platforms you’re using. 

That’s a massive challenge – particularly when you think about industries like life sciences, financial services, etc – and so having one full-stack platform, like Writer, that can adapt to your requirements and uphold the highest levels of quality and standards, is imperative.  

How do you see the role of AI in the enterprise evolving over the next five to ten years? 

I often tell my team that I’m not done on this journey until I’m sending emails from my mind in the shower. I do think so much of work will go screenless as AI becomes more advanced and more embedded – and we’re actually working on building voice activation into our applications right now. 

It used to be the case that AI was for automating really repetitive work, but what’s really clear right now is that we (humans) are going to be surpassed very soon. AI is going to be able to take on a huge amount more work and actually responsibility in an enterprise environment. I think a lot of decisions will be made by AI as well, and so really what’s left for humans to do is to agree on the overall direction – on what the goals are, what we’re trying to do, how we’re going to do these things, and then so much of the execution actually happens autonomously. 

In terms of how this transformation actually takes place practically, I think in a lot of ways it’s going to look like what we’ve seen with the cloud. You’ve got lots of companies today who are totally in the cloud, and lots of the Fortune 500 are still actually making their transition – and that’s taken 15 years. So I think it’ll be gradual and phased – and even within different teams and departments under the same company, there will be some people who are just getting started and other people who are way ahead of the curve. 

Founding and building a high-growth startup – and particularly an AI one at that – is a massive undertaking and comes with a lot of highs and lows. On a personal level, how do you manage that pressure? Is there any advice you would share with founders who are just starting out? 

It is a really high-pressure journey, and there’s a lot at stake. You have to look after yourself as an individual in order to be able to look after your team and your business, so it is important to try and find your own personal toolkit to enable you to be as resilient and energised as possible along the journey.

The best piece of advice I’d give might sound obvious, but is to hire amazing people. I’ve been fortunate enough to build out a really exceptional leadership team at Writer, and the level of trust and confidence I have in them is such that I can really zoom out and focus on the big picture challenges and business direction, safe in the knowledge that the day to day is in the best possible hands. Learning to adapt from start-up founder to scale-up leader is a journey in itself, but your secret weapon along the way is really your team.