Company
Your community’s knight in shining armor
Usually found patrolling social channels making sure the kids are ok
We are an independent, next-generation cybersecurity company committed to protecting our clients’ content and their customers. Our mission is to foster a safer digital environment, especially for children and teenagers, by proactively detecting and preventing harmful behaviors such as bullying, harassment, and cyber grooming within online communities.
Amanda, our state-of-the-art, AI-driven SaaS solution works in real-time to identify and mitigate unwanted behaviors. By predicting potentially dangerous content, we enable early intervention to prevent abuse from escalating. This proactive approach ensures a safer experience for all users and better community health.
Story
Founded on a calling to make the internet a safer place for children and teenagers
In 2016, a heartbreaking sextortion case captured the attention of Professor Patrick Bours. Fourteen-year-old Amanda Todd was deceived by an adult male posing as an eighteen-year-old boy online, leading her to share intimate photographs. This deception resulted in relentless extortion and harassment, culminating in a tragic outcome.
This incident inspired the creation of Amanda—a proactive moderation tool designed to detect and stop predatory conversations and cyber grooming early. Since its inception, Amanda has evolved into a comprehensive trust and safety platform, managing everything from content moderation and community insights to regulatory compliance.
Team
Hege Tokerud
CEO & Co-founder
Hege has over 15 years of experience been building business opportunities out of new technology, both as management consultant, investor and a driving force in the commercialization of cyber security research at NTNU for the last four years. She has been key in founding other companies, and Aiba is her fifth research-based company out of NTNU. In addition, she has over ten years of experience of directorship.
Gard Støe
CTO & Co-founder
Gard has 20+ years experience with IT and business development. Building and leading diverse multidisciplinary development teams with proven results.
Competency ranging from automating processes, system integration, architecture, security and developing applications. The last 5 years focusing on innovation, experiments and data science.
Sushma Venkatesh (PhD)
Data Scientist & Co-founder
Sushma Venkatesh has 10+ years of experience from research based on pattern recognition and applied machine learning. She has extensively worked on various attacks generated on images such as morphing attacks generated on facial images in passports. Sushma has provided various solutions to detect the facial morphing images based on machine learning approaches. She has authored/co-authored more than 50 scientific publications and holds a patent on morphing attack detection.
Prof. Patrick Bours
Lead Reseacher & Co-founder
Ida Nordberg
Head of delivery and operations
Mustafa Suleimanji
Sales Director
Steinar Kvam
Chief Design Officer
Steinar has 20 years experience as a multidisciplinary designer and communicator with experience from agencies and as an entrepreneur.
Andreas Holen
Head of Platform Ops
Andres has 20 years experience from IT Operations in online stock trading, broadcasting and telecom.
Marcus Hülsdau
Data Scientist
Marcus Hülsdau studied electrical engineering in Münster, Germany and holds two M.Sc from Kozminski University (Poland) and Lancaster University (UK). Before joining Aiba, Marcus helped some of the largest companies in Germany implementing natural language processing in their customer facing operations and founded a med-tech startup.
Marius Hernes Brateng
Developer
Marius Hernes Brateng earned his Master of Science in Cybernetics and Robotics from NTNU.
With previous experience at Hexagon Ragasco, Marius has been exposed to the intricacies of both technical and commercial aspects of projects.
His expertise lies in backend development, where he has contributed to the creation of robust and scalable software systems.
Marcus Farstad
Developer
Christopher Coello (PhD)
ML Scientist
Christopher has worked in medical imaging for 10 years, both in academia and in pharma companies. Since 2015, Christopher has been a data scientist in fintech, agritech and in the energy sector. He has implemented EDA, ML and AI solutions in startups (Hagal), mid-size companies (Norsvin, Imanova) and large companies (Elvia, Thomson Reuters), both nationally and internationally. His wide experience spans a wide spectrum of data sources (time-series, images, videos and text) and use-cases.
Lars Lydersen (PhD)
Board Chair
Lars Lydersen holds a bachelor’s degree in econoomics from The University of Oslo, a master’s degree in electronics and a PhD in Quantum Cryptography from The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). He has broad international experience from technology startups. Currently, he works as an investment partner in Wiski Capital, an early-phase venture capital firm backing the rawest technology founders to shape the future.
Anne Lise Waal
Advisor
Anne Lise has more than 15 years experience as executive and entrepreneur in SaaS and gaming companies. Anne Lise also has extensive board experience, having served on the board on multiple companies from stock listed to start-ups, she brings extensive knowledge of tech strategy, SaaS business growth as well as perspectives on how to build winning teams.
Ralph Natter Berg
Board
Chief Commercial Officer at Spoor
Erik Wenngren
Board
Partner and Co-founder at Spintop Ventures
Helen Agering
Board
Partner and Co-founder at Spintop Ventures
