Mathew Haswell is Co-Founder, COO and CPO at Refiant, a South African-founded AI startup using nature-inspired algorithms to radically compress AI models and reduce the energy and hardware required to run them. He brings over 15 years of product, entrepreneurial and executive leadership experience across multinational companies to his role, championing the belief that AI adoption and sustainability can coexist.

Mathew studied at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, earning four degrees including a Bachelor of Social Science, Psychology Honours in Neuroscience and Organisational Psychology, an Executive MBA, and a Masters in Medicine. Prior to Refiant, he served as Chief Product Officer at the Ignition Group, leading product strategy across AI-powered billing, customer data and engagement platforms.

A self-described multipotentialite, Mathew is a 3x startup co-founder with a conviction that AI efficiency and environmental sustainability are inseparable commercial imperatives. He has publicly argued that organisations should not have to choose between deploying AI and meeting their energy targets.

Before Refiant, Mathew co-founded Yreeka (digital transformation services), Unsilo.me (SME all-in-one platform), teachfolk (EdTech marketplace) and Plural.fi (a decentralised insurance ecosystem incubated by Founders Factory UK and Aviva). He also held executive roles at Derivco, a globally recognised iGaming technology company, and served as CTO at The Answer Series.

Refiant secured a $5 million seed round led by VoLo Earth Ventures and has assembled a team including a former Google Cloud architect, a Cambridge PhD researcher and a NASA-experienced engineer. The company is in active discussions with multinational technology firms and its compression technology has demonstrated energy savings equivalent to running 100 AI prompts for the cost of one on standard infrastructure.