Investor · Scientist · Technologist
Investment Thesis
The most consequential companies of the next decade will be built at the intersection of deep technology, applied AI, and sovereign capital seeking real-world outcomes. I invest where these forces meet — backing founders who translate hard science into scalable platforms.
Cell-cultured proteins, precision fermentation, bio-based materials. The GCC is investing billions to build food and pharma sovereignty — I structure JVs to bring these technologies in-country.
Novel modalities for antimicrobial resistance — lysins, phage, host-directed therapies. Digital biomarkers, brain-computer interfaces, and agentic AI compressing the distance between data and clinical decisions.
Multilingual and low-resource AI — frontier models are English-dominant; the economic opportunity in making them work for Arabic, Urdu, and languages spoken by billions is enormous. AI-native drug discovery compressing timelines and capital intensity.
Founders with deep domain expertise. Platform technology with multi-market optionality. Technical moats — proprietary data, novel architectures, or domain-specific training that can't be replicated by prompting a foundation model.
Current Roles
Head, Technology Investments
NEOM Investment Fund · RiyadhInvest and manage portfolio across Biotech, Healthcare, Agri-food, and Blockchain. Special focus on advanced biomanufacturing.
Co-Founder
AI Astrolabe · USAOperating role; we deliver high-quality multimodal curated data to power frontier AI models and agents with specific expertise in low-resource languages.
Biography
Babar Khan, Ph.D. is a scientist, entrepreneur, and business leader with over 20 years of experience bridging academia and industry across life sciences, technology, and AI. The second of eight children in a first-generation immigrant family, Babar grew up in upstate New York, attended public schools, and built a career defined by a combination of rigorous science, venture capital, and a commitment to using both for impact. Named to MIT Technology Review's "Innovators Under 35" (2019), he has built a career at the intersection of cutting-edge research and real-world impact — from the lab bench to global investment and AI ventures.
Babar leads disruptive technology investments at the NEOM Investment Fund and is co-founder of AI Astrolabe, a venture focused on bridging the high-quality multimodal data gap in frontier AI development. His industry roots trace back to Genzyme Genetics and GE Global Research, before he joined Contrafect, a NYC biotech tackling multi-drug resistant bacteria, as one of the first scientists hired.
A lifelong educator and community builder, Babar delivers leadership, entrepreneurship, and project management workshops as President of KAUST's alumni network. He lives in Riyadh with his wife and five children, and is deeply committed to planetary health and building a better world for the next generation.