Asendia AI: The Tunisian Startup Revolutionizing Recruitment with AI
Their startup, Asendia AI, has just been admitted to Y Combinator's Summer 2026 promotion. Rihab Lajmi becomes the first Tunisian founder to join the legendary Silicon Valley accelerator.
A Journey from Tunisia to San Francisco
Rihab Lajmi and Badis Zormati grew up in Tunisia, studied and worked in Germany, before settling in San Francisco to build their business. Today, they are taking a decisive step: their startup, Asendia AI, has been selected to join Y Combinator's Summer 2026 promotion, one of the most influential accelerators in the world, behind giants like Airbnb, Stripe, and Dropbox. This recognition comes with a historic record: Rihab Lajmi is the first Tunisian female founder to have ever secured a spot in this elite program.
An Engineer with Experience at Microsoft and Google
Before embarking on her entrepreneurial adventure, Lajmi honed her expertise within two global technology giants. After several years at Microsoft, she joined Google, where she specialized in cloud computing and large-scale infrastructure. It was there, at the heart of technological innovation, that she became aware of a striking paradox. "I saw technology transform entire industries at a dizzying pace," she confides, "but recruitment had hardly changed. Recruiters were still spending hours manually sorting through resumes, conducting repetitive interviews, and juggling fragmented tools that didn't communicate with each other. This disconnect struck me."
Asendia AI: Revolutionizing Recruitment with AI
Founded in late 2024, Asendia AI develops custom artificial intelligence agents capable of automating the most time-consuming steps in the recruitment process: candidate sourcing, profile analysis, and intelligent pre-selection. The result is ambitious – and verifiable: client companies recruit up to ten times faster, while accessing profiles they may not have detected through traditional methods.
A Network and Access to Influential Founders and Investors
The startup is already funded and has a dozen significant clients, primarily in the American and Latin American markets – traction that Y Combinator's support is expected to significantly amplify. "Y Combinator is above all a network," explains Rihab Lajmi. "Access to the most influential founders and investors in Silicon Valley will allow us to accelerate our development and prepare our next funding round in the best possible conditions."
From Tunisia to San Francisco, via Berlin
Their trajectory is that of two engineers who have never stopped challenging themselves. Leaving Tunisia to pursue their studies and careers in Germany, they worked for several years in German technology companies before making a radical decision: to leave everything behind and create their own startup. They settled in San Francisco, raised initial funding from European investors, and dove headfirst into the project.
Targeting the Recruitment Sector
It was precisely their prior experience in human resources – both had been involved in recruitment processes – that convinced them to target this sector. "We knew exactly what wasn't working," Lajmi summarizes. "We didn't need to validate the problem. We had lived it from the inside."
