From Architecture to AI-Powered Building Diagnostics: Tarek Rakha’s start-up story

"The product wasn't even ready,” Tarek Rakha recalled. “We had the algorithms, we had the technology lined up, but we didn’t have the automation at all.” Yet, there he was, signing a deal with the first client for his Lamarr.AI. 

Tarek Rakha is an associate professor at Georgia Tech, and CEO of his first startup, Lamarr.AI, which uses drones, infrared imaging, and AI to revolutionize building diagnostics. Think of it as an MRI for buildings.

Rakha is an architect by training. His academic journey started at Cairo University, with a bachelor’s and master’s degrees, before a PhD from MIT. His research evolved into studying walkability, cycling, and urban sustainability, focusing on improving pedestrian comfort across varying urban environments and climates.

After earning his PhD, Rakha joined Syracuse University in 2015 and founded the Performative Praxis Lab (PPL), where he began applying drones and thermal imaging to building diagnostics, laying the technical foundation for Lamarr.AI.

The Foundation

 “I have a commitment to sustainability and energy efficiency, and a passion for helping this planet,” Rakha explained. “While most researchers get excited about new designs, I wanted to focus on existing buildings, because they are often neglected.”

 In the United States, around half of the built environment was constructed before 1980, much of it built unsustainably. This challenge drove the research at PPL, which pushed beyond traditional architecture into multidisciplinary territory.

Rakha collaborated with Senem Velipasalar, an expert in computer vision and machine learning at Syracuse University, to develop drone-based thermal imaging techniques. The team expanded to include two MIT colleagues; John Fernandez and Norhan Bayomi. Together, they published extensively, secured major grants, and positioned PPL as a leader in performance simulation and automated diagnostics.

The Momentum

 In 2019, Rakha moved to Georgia Tech to lead the High Performance Building Lab, scaling up his research, and attracting a $1.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to advance drone-based thermal diagnostics and energy modeling.

The grant became the seed funding for Lamarr.AI, co-founded with Fernandez and Bayomi. Initially, the team didn’t plan to start a company. “We were looking for a commercialization partner,” Rakha said. “But we hit an inflection point.”

 The first was a demo at MIT. Although the product was still under development, a potential client expressed immediate interest and became Lamarr.AI’s first customer. Next, in collaboration with industry partners, the team entered and won the E-Robot competition, securing $222,000 in funding without giving up any equity.

“The prize money came in, and we didn’t know exactly what to do with it,” Rakha recalls. At that point, his co-founders urged him to take ownership. Fernandez had advised multiple startups, and Bayomi had hands-on experience launching one. Their insight convinced Rakha that Lamarr.AI wasn’t just a research project, it was a company.

Risk, Venture, and Transformation

Shortly after securing the first two clients; a real estate company and an academic institution, Rakha took the risk, taking unpaid leave from Georgia Tech to focus on Lamarr.AI full time, despite not yet having VC backing. Georgia Tech not only approved the leave, but supported the startup with a licensing agreement and even invested in the pre-seed round.

Out of 70 potential investors Rakha contacted, seven invested during the pre-seed stage, including venture capital firms, academic institutions, and angel investors. “We were targeting $1 million and raised $1.1 million; we were oversubscribed,” Rakha said. “As CEO, my number one job was to raise capital.”

To achieve the target, Rakha brought on a consultant to help build the fundraising infrastructure; a data room, pitch deck, and investor introduction lists. The team leveraged MIT and Georgia Tech’s startup ecosystems to gain exposure and meet investors. “My life transformed,” Rakha said. “It’s completely different from academia.”

The Entrepreneurial Challenge

“In academia, there is a checklist: raise research funding, publish, teach, and mentor. In entrepreneurship, you’re in open water,” Rakha explained. There’s no script, just principles you adapt to your context.

One of the key lessons for Rakha was the importance of hiring the best talent, who not only possess the required skills but also align well in terms of ethics and behavior. As he explains, “You can have the best product and funding, but with the wrong team, you can sink the company, and yourself.”

While Lamarr.AI is a hybrid company, Rakha makes sure it operates with full transparency. “Everyone sees the bank balance, customer pipeline, wins, and challenges. We meet in person monthly and run a book club featuring titles like The Lean Startup and Measure What Matters.”

 Jumping into Water

For researchers wanting to take the leap into entrepreneurship, Rakha advises, “start by workshopping it within the entrepreneurial ecosystems that you have access to.” "If you're in a university and they have startup programmes, an entrepreneurship programme, or even a business school, this is where it starts," he said. Rakha stressed the importance of conducting customer discovery early, suggesting that researchers engage in structured conversations with at least 50 potential customers to identify genuine market needs before developing a product. "The worst thing in the world is building a product no-one wants to buy."

Rakha also urged researchers to make a decisive commitment, "At some point, you have to decide to dedicate serious time to this. Don’t linger. Decide and jump."

“If you’re at a stage in life where starting a company excites you, and you’ve validated your idea, take the leap. It’s liberating,” Rakha adds. There are multiple paths of research commercialization, including leading companies directly or staying behind as advisors or board members.

As an Egyptian, Rakha believes in the potential of Arab universities to support academic entrepreneurship by offering real funding, IP flexibility, and leaves of absence in exchange of fair IP rights or equity shares. “You can’t take significant ownership percentages of a founder’s company and expect them to commercialize. The real return is a portfolio of success stories tied to your university’s brand.”

Recently in 2025, Rakha was named a Regent’s Innovator by the University System of Georgia, which recognizes faculty whose research has made impact through commercialization. The title came with a renewable three-year leave of absence from Georgia Tech, giving him the rare opportunity to fully dedicate himself to Lamarr.AI without stepping away from academia entirely.

For Rakha, building Lamarr.AI isn’t a departure from academia, it’s an extension of it. while the company is still in its early stages, Rakha’s journey is a blueprint for how research can evolve into market-driven innovation.

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