Team
The people behind Etcera.
We are David and Anissa Agahchen, founders of Etcera. We build AI to help people grow, make meaningful choices and shape a sustainable future.
David Agahchen
CEO & Chief Architect
David seeks to understand the deepest truths of reality and how people make meaning within it. An optimist by nature, he connects ideas and looks for ways forward. He sees an opportunity to shape AI around human growth and empowerment, preserving people’s freedom to explore and decide who they want to become.
Reading the 2017 paper Attention Is All You Need, a foundation for today’s language models, David saw a breakthrough in AI’s capabilities, but a question remained: how could it truly understand and empower people? He believed grounding AI in human intention could be key to overcoming the Sorcerer’s Apprentice problem: carrying out instructions while missing what the person actually meant.
When Geoffrey Hinton left Google in 2023 to speak openly about AI’s risks, that question became urgent. David responded by developing his earlier insight into the white paper Intention Is All It Takes and creating a podcast on AI alignment to explore a constructive response: AI that strengthens human agency as it becomes more capable.
David holds a master’s degree in artificial intelligence from the University of Waterloo. He brings more than two decades of experience designing and building software systems, including previous technical leadership roles at IBM. At Etcera, he oversees technology, architecture and the long-term vision.
Anissa envisions a world where people can develop their potential together and live full and meaningful lives. She believes realizing that vision takes the collective will to act and direct tools and resources toward it.
She was born in Iran, grew up in Chad and moved to Canada at thirteen. Living across different geopolitical and social environments showed her how deeply social conditions and structures of dominance can shape a person’s life journey. That experience informs her commitment to expanding what people can do and who they can become.
Her approach to AI grows from that commitment. She believes ideas about being human are being encoded into the systems shaping the future. Viewing people as statistical machines leads to different design choices than seeing them as conscious beings having a physical experience. She sees the people she builds for as souls on a journey. That perspective guides the product, its interactions and the outcomes she wants to make possible.
Anissa holds a master’s degree in computer vision from the University of Victoria. She brings experience in software development, DevOps and program management across the private and public sectors. At Etcera, she leads product direction, user experience and day-to-day operations.
Why we are building Etcera.
The possibility of AI grounded in human intention brought our interests together. We explored it through research, writing, conversation and design experimentation, laying the foundations for Etcera.
That exploration led us to Attached Intelligence: AI that holds your intentions as they change, so you can see what matters to you and choose what comes next. Our approach begins with a person’s own life and reaches toward shared intentions and the world people shape together. At every layer, our aim is to strengthen human agency and support flourishing.
Today, we are all in. We are putting our time, resources and experience into bringing those ideas into everyday life. This is our way of contributing to the future described in our vision, Towards True Prosperity For All.
