AGI isn’t the ‘Holy Grail’ for women in AI. It’s gender-purpose AI, and it’s already here

As of yesterday, March 12, hundreds of thousands of innovators, disruptors, and leaders began descending on Austin for SXSW. If you search “Tech and AI” in this year’s schedule, you’ll find 185 results. That’s more than double the 80 AI sessions in 2024, the same year I wrote a Fast Company op-ed about how women have spent decades building the intellectual foundation of AI while receiving almost none of the credit. It was also the year that companies with at least one female founder raised $38.8 billion in venture capital funding which is a 27 percent increase from the year prior, but still not close to the high point in 2021 with a raise of $62.5 billion. 

Two years later and the gap—both in acknowledgement and investor funding—hasn’t closed. However, something else is happening and it’s worth paying attention to. 

There is a new wave of women who refuse to wait for the AI industry to become “fair” and “equal.” They are building their own companies, on their own terms, with a more authentic and purpose-driven design mentality. It’s not general-purpose AI; it’s gender-purpose AI. 

An important distinction

Before you roll your eyes, the distinction matters more than you might think. By 2030—which is now only four years away—AI won’t just enhance companies’ business models. According to IBM, it will be the business model. Right now, that business model is being built unsurprisingly by male-dominated teams for general audiences. The truth is technology—as an industry and a concept—was never built for women. It was not built to prioritize or accommodate our visions. 

But that is changing. A new class of female leaders in AI is disrupting this model and demanding more room for gender-purpose AI and less patience for the influx of male-dominated teams building general-purpose tools. This is the year we move beyond celebrating their presence and start backing their vision with real investment. 

One of those women is Rana el Kaliouby, co-founder and general partner of Blue Tulip Ventures, who will deliver a keynote at this year’s conference titled “Why the Future of AI Must Be Human Centric.” She has spent more than two decades humanizing technology. As co-founder of Affectiva, she pioneered the field of Emotion AI, which reads human feeling through facial expression and vocal cues, and now as co-founder and general partner of Blue Tulip Ventures, she literally puts her money where her mission is and invests in early-stage startups building ethical AI that is good for people. The word “good” is subjective. But for too long, it’s been defined by the people building the problem, not solving it.

The problem is also being solved by women like Valerie Chapman, CEO and co-founder of Ruth AI, an AI-powered career advancement platform. Last month, Valerie asked Sam Altman at an OpenAI builder town hall how AI can be used to fix the $1.6 trillion gender wage gap. His response was that AI should be an equalizing force in society and like Valerie pointed out in her recent op-ed, when AI is designed with intention, it can close the gap and it’s time to build it. 

What’s next

As a fellow female founder helping brands understand and utilize AI—as a topic and technology—in their comms strategies, here’s what this shift tells me about where we are headed in 2026. 

1. Male tech leaders want AGI. Female tech leaders want gender-purpose AI. The second is more inclusive. 

When women build AI, they tend to ask different questions in the design and development stage. Questions like who is this actually for and who will benefit from these capabilities? The truth is artificial general intelligence, or AGI, is at least 10 years away and the race toward the “holy grail,” as Big Tech has coined it, should not hold as much power and influence as it does. Gender-purpose AI is a race toward something more rewarding and meaningful: relevance. What a concept—that we could have more technology that works for the people it claims to serve. 

2. The gender wage gap will not close with more women working in tech. It will close when more women are building tech. 

Representation matters every month, not just during Black History Month, Women’s History Month, or International Women’s Day. Women deserve representation in the very tools and technologies they depend on. With almost 78 million women in the American workforce, this is a demographic that has earned our time, attention and investment. 

3. Investment in gender-purpose AI means nothing without investing in the women who will build tomorrow’s innovations

The increase in female founded and funded VC companies is a great step in the right direction. But the progress pipeline matters just as much if not more. We need more mentorship programs, technical education, access to capital for first-time female founders who have the vision but not a seat at the Big Tech table. To ensure we double down on gender-purpose AI as an industry, we have to prioritize and support the women who want to build what comes next. 

4. The milestones for women in AI aren’t just on stage. They are in hallways and in boardrooms. 

When women lead AI companies, the product looks different. Canadian computer scientist Joy Buolamwini pioneered ‘Gender Shades’ in 2018, which piloted an intersectional approach to inclusive product testing for AI and exposed racial and gender bias in Microsoft’s, IBM’s, and Amazon’s facial recognition systems and insisted they change. Rana built technology that reads human emotion because she believed machines should understand people, not just process them. These are real-world use cases that prove that whoever builds the technology determines what the technology does and who it serves. 

In 2026, women won’t be waiting for “the next big thing” because they will be the ones behind it. They will be the ones building the technology that addresses what male leaders have not addressed: equity, inclusion, and a redefinition of “good” that finally reflects what 51% of the world wants, needs and deserves. It’s time the other 49% joined us. 

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