Meet Kalyani Ramadurgam: Indian-Origin Techie Who Helped Apple Fight Terrorism Launches AI Automation Startup

Indian-origin tech professional Kalyani Ramadurgam, who has earlier worked with Apple on counter-terrorism measures, has been named in the Forbes 30 Under 30 United States 2026 list in the finance category. She earned the recognition after co-founding an AI-driven compliance startup, marking a shift from her corporate career.

New York-based Ramadurgam has studied computer science with specialisation in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Before becoming an entrepreneur, she worked at Apple in a sensitive role focused on preventing misuse of the tech giant’s payment service, Apple Pay, by terrorist networks. Her work involved blocking individuals on global terrorism watch lists from accessing the platform, according to Forbes.

Ramadurgam has said that at Apple she was surprised to find compliance work remained manual and time-consuming. "It meant reading through not just hundreds, but thousands of pages of documentation," she told Forbes. "Organisations were just throwing bodies at the problem.”

Currently, Ramadurgam serves as the CEO of Kobalt Labs. Previously, she worked as a software engineer at Zenysis Technologies between 2021 and 2023. At Apple, she worked on Apple Pay fraud prevention in 2020. She has also held research and engineering roles at Stanford University, Guardian Group, Trials.ai and Akamai Technologies, focusing on AI, machine learning and data analytics, according to her LinkedIn profile.  

The 26-year-old techie holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science with a focus on Artificial Intelligence from Stanford University. She also earned a Bachelor’s degree in computer science from the same university. She was also a part of startup accelerator Y Combinator’s S23 cohort.

“Kalyani is the CEO of Kobalt Labs. She previously conducted AI research at Stanford, built financial security products at Apple, and built health data analysis tools used by governments of 13 countries at Zenysis,” the Y Combinator website states.  

In 2023, Ramadurgam co-founded Kobalt Labs with former Affirm software engineer Ashi Agrawal. Their company focuses on modernising compliance using machine learning. Kobalt’s AI models analyse large volumes of documents, helping banks vet business partners and ensure regulatory compliance. These also include blocking transactions from sanctioned countries and reporting security breaches promptly. The startup has already raised $13 million in funding and serves over 20 clients, according to Forbes.