Giorgos Emmanouilidis joins KAR AI as a founding member, taking on growth
A 19-year-old mechanical engineering student, Stem Racing award winner and coach to Greek competition teams takes on the job of growing an AI research service that refuses dealer money.
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Giorgos Emmanouilidis is joining KAR AI as a founding member. He takes on growth — how more drivers find us, understand what we do, and come back.
Who he is
Giorgos is 19 and studies Mechanical Engineering at the International Hellenic University. In 2024 he took part in Stem Racing, the international student engineering competition, where his team won the AI Generative Design award — a category that rewards using generative tools to solve a real design problem, not to decorate one.
For the past two years he has been on the other side of it: a Project Management coach and Enterprise coach for Greek teams competing in Stem Racing. The enterprise side of that competition is the part most engineering students dread. You have to find sponsors, build a brand, explain a technical product to people who don't share your vocabulary, and keep a small team on schedule while everything changes at once.
Why that matters for KAR AI
KAR AI is independent research. A driver tells us their budget, their kilometres, their seats and their deal-breakers, and we come back with cars and accessories that actually fit — with the reasoning and the numbers attached. No brand can pay to appear in a recommendation or to move up in one.
That rule is the product. It also removes the obvious way to grow. A comparison site can grow on placement fees and sponsored slots; we've ruled those out on purpose. So growth here has to come from the harder places: people trusting the answers, telling other people, and coming back the next time they buy something with wheels.
Giorgos has already done a version of this job. Convincing a sponsor to back a student team is not a small ask, and it is won the same way we intend to win drivers — by being clear about what you're building and honest about what it does.
What he'll be working on
Getting KAR in front of more drivers in Greece and beyond, growing our presence in the communities where car decisions actually get discussed, building the partnerships that make sense for an independent service, and tracking whether any of it works. We've matched 150+ drivers across 250+ chats and cover 40+ brands. The job is to make those numbers look small.
Welcome
Giorgos joins a founding team that is young, technical and stubborn about independence. He fits.
Welcome, Giorgos!
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