The People Behind Protopia
Protopia AI helps financial institutions unlock powerful AI and LLM solutions while keeping customer and transaction data protected, private, and compliant.
Protopia Leadership
The Team that makes it happen
We’re researchers, engineers, data scientists, and security experts united by a shared obsession: making enterprise AI as private as it is powerful.
Our team combines decades of experience in machine learning, cryptography, distributed systems, and enterprise security. But beyond credentials, we’re people who believe technology should serve humanity, not exploit it.
Eiman
Ebrahimi
Eiman Ebrahimi, PhD, is the CEO and co‑founder of Protopia Al. With a passion for enabling Al’s impact across industry verticals, he previously served as a Research Scientist at NVIDIA for 9 years, leading research to solve key challenges in accessing massive datasets for ML/Al and optimizing large scale GPU systems for training LLMs.
Jennifer
Cwagenberg
Jennifer heads the engineering team at Protopia. Her previous roles include managing security at Toyota’s Product Cybersecurity Group, overseeing Cloud workloads at N‑able, and handling data responsibilities at Match.com.
Lt. Gen Scott
McKean (Ret.)
Lt. General (Ret.) Scott McKean last served as deputy commanding general for Army Futures Command and has been a Senior DoD Advisor to Protopia since September 2024. We are thrilled to welcome him onboard to lead our Federal and DOW efforts full time.
Brittany
Carambio
Brittany leads marketing at Protopia AI. She brings deep experience marketing advanced AI infrastructure to enterprise and government buyers. Previously, she held leadership roles spanning brand, product marketing, and strategic communications at OctoAI (acquired by NVIDIA), Egnyte, Aira, and In-Q-Tel (IQT).
Mark
Piening
Mark leads Business Development and Growth at Protopia. Specializing in growth and transformation for both entrepreneurial and Fortune 500 companies, he has a decade of expertise in buy and sell‑side M&A and has worked at NodeSource, Alegion, Symatec, Dell and EY.
History & Purpose
The Problem that drove us
In 2020, we faced a frustrating paradox: enterprises had mountains of valuable data, but they couldn’t use it. 80% of enterprise data remained untapped, not from lack of interest, but from justified fear of exposure.
Every time an organization wanted to leverage AI for fraud detection, personalized experiences, or process automation, they faced the same impossible question: how do we use our most sensitive data without putting it at risk?
Existing solutions failed on one of two fronts: they either compromised privacy or sacrificed so much performance that they became impractical. Traditional cryptographic techniques added latencies of minutes or hours to processes that needed to be instantaneous.
The Problem that drove us
We founded Protopia with one conviction: privacy and performance shouldn’t be mutually exclusive options. We created Stained Glass Transform, a technology that protects sensitive data at the feature level while maintaining AI model accuracy, running up to 14,000 times faster than cryptographic alternatives.
Our Mission
Democratize access to enterprise-grade AI by unlocking the data that today remains blocked by privacy barriers. We believe every organization, from startups to government agencies, should be able to innovate with AI without compromising user trust or violating privacy regulations.
Values & Culture
Values & Culture
Privacy isn’t a feature we add at the end—it’s the foundation of everything we build. Every line of code, every architecture decision, every partnership we form is evaluated first through the lens: does this protect the end user’s privacy?
Technical Transparency
We don’t sell “magic black boxes.” We publish whitepapers, share our research, and explain how our technology works. Our customers deserve to understand exactly how we protect their data, not just blindly trust us.
Performance Without Compromise
We believe slow security is security nobody uses. If our solution adds significant friction, we’ve failed. That’s why we obsess over making privacy so fast it becomes invisible to the end user.
Collaboration Over Competition
Privacy in AI is a challenge no single company can solve alone. That’s why we work with partners like NetApp and AWS, and contribute to the open-source ecosystem. A rising tide lifts all boats.
Subscribe to newsletter
© Copyright 2025. All Rights Reserved. Protopia