Company
We’ve run newsrooms.
Now we’re rebuilding them.
A47 was started by two operators who spent the last decade scaling digital media — and watched the industry try to solve newsroom decline by hiring less. We thought there was a better answer.
Why now
Three things changed in 18 months.
- Trust scaffoldingOne
Model quality crossed the line where AI can be trusted to ship under a masthead, with the right scaffolding. Multi-model verification (the Verify approach) is the scaffolding.
- Newsroom economicsTwo
Newsroom economics broke. U.S. newsroom employment is down 26% since 2008. UK and US journalism shed 3,000+ more jobs in 2025 alone. Headcount can’t be the answer.
- Verification choke pointThree
Verification became the choke point. AI-generated content jumped from 7% of fact-checked claims in 2024 to 16% in 2025. Hallucination is the reason most editors say no to AI. We built A47 around the verification problem first, the production engine second.
Founders
Two operators. One bet.
Ali Rizvi
Co-founder & CEO
Founder and operator of Nukta, a digital-first media company. Previously Chief Growth & Partnerships Officer at Nukta, Influencer Marketing & Live Commerce at Alibaba Group, and at VEON. LSE, BSc Business Management. Prior AI ventures: Botwa.ai, STech.ai. 10+ years across AI, media, and technology.
Andre Teow
Co-founder & CPO
Co-founder of Tiki, India’s #2 short-video platform — scaled to 30M monthly active users in under two years. Founder of BlueBolt Labs, an AI product studio. Founder of the Build with AI community. Co-Principal at Seastar Partners. Ex-Rocket Internet. BA Economics, University of Waikato.
Why here
Built where the industry is moving fastest.
MENA digital media is among the fastest-growing publisher markets in the world. The UAE digital media market alone is forecast to grow at a 12.2% CAGR through 2030; Saudi digital formats are growing at 26%. Dubai sits at the center — the buyers are here, the audiences are next door, and the regulatory environment is the most operator-friendly in the region. We’re headquartered here because that’s where the customers are.
Engineering runs from Kuala Lumpur. KL gives us senior engineering talent at competitive cost, in a timezone that overlaps with both Dubai and South Asia. We’re building the team we need where we can hire fastest. The customer base is global; the back office is wherever the best engineers are.
What we believe
Three sentences we hold to.
Editorial judgment scales with humans. Production scales with machines.
— Belief 1 Verification is not a feature. It’s the foundation.
— Belief 2 Speed without rigor is noise. Rigor without speed is irrelevance. Both, or neither.
— Belief 3
Hiring
We hire for shipping velocity, ownership, and proximity to the customer.
We don’t have a marketing team — this site is run by A47 itself.
Want to talk?
Book a 30-minute call with Ali. We respond inside 12 hours, every working day.