ISLAMABAD (The Thursday Times) — RLabs, a Pakistani startup that builds simulators to train people and machines, has won the GOAL Startup Award at Plug and Play’s Silicon Valley November Summit, beating 17 other startups from around the world.
The company is led by Harris Ahmed, who graduated from the National University of Sciences and Technology in 2018, and was first incubated at the National Incubation Centre for Aerospace Technologies. The summit, held in California from November 2 to 5, drew more than 3,000 founders, investors, corporate executives and government representatives. Plug and Play, a global innovation platform and venture capital firm, runs its Global Overseas Acceleration and Learning programme to bring startups from outside the United States into its Silicon Valley network. RLabs was one of 18 chosen this cycle.
What it does: RLabs pitched extended reality simulators, synthetic data and machine training. Its simulators build interactive virtual environments for training people on complex machinery. The same scenes can produce labelled data, artificially generated information that is used to teach AI systems to work in physical spaces without the cost of collecting it from the real world. Ahmed has spent about a decade building such training tools for machine operators.
The National Incubation Centre for Aerospace Technologies says RLabs is building its own large language model to power a simulation engine that works across platforms and can cut development time by 75 per cent, a claim that has not been independently verified. The company has not disclosed its funding, customers or revenue. Ahmed has said it plans to launch in the United States, without giving a date.
IT Minister Shaza Fatima Khawaja called the award “a proud moment”. “Congratulations to Harris Ahmed and the entire RLabs team for making Pakistan proud,” she said. Last year, four startups from the National Incubation Centre in Lahore joined the same programme, the first time a Pakistani incubator had placed founders in Plug and Play’s Silicon Valley network.
