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From Venture Capital to AI Innovation: Kais Khimji Launches Blockit

by THEFUTURE.TEAM

January 23, 2026

A Bold Transition From Investor to Startup Founder

Kais Khimji, who built a storied career as a venture investor and served as a partner at Sequoia Capital, is now turning his entrepreneurial vision into reality. Much like fellow Sequoia alumni, including David Vélez of Nubank, Khimji has long harbored ambitions of founding a startup. The result is Blockit, an AI-driven calendar scheduling platform that reimagines how busy professionals manage their time—a concept that traces back to Khimji’s early days as a Harvard student.

Securing a Confident Investment

Blockit did not launch quietly. In a clear vote of confidence, Sequoia Capital led the company’s $5 million seed round. Pat Grady, Sequoia’s General Partner, asserted in a blog post that Blockit has the potential to evolve into a business with over $1 billion in revenue, and that Khimji is the right catalyst to drive this growth.

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Reinventing Scheduling With Advanced AI

While several startups have ventured into automated scheduling, Khimji believes that Blockit leverages breakthroughs in large language models (LLMs) to far surpass the capabilities of its predecessors, like Clara Labs and x.ai. Unlike the category leader Calendly, Blockit’s AI agents are designed to manage the entire scheduling process—negotiating meeting times and preferences autonomously—without requiring manual link sharing between users.

An AI Ecosystem for Time Management

Co-founded with John Hahn, whose experience spans influential calendar products such as Timeful, Google Calendar, and Clockwise, Blockit aims to create an AI-powered social network centered on time. The platform enables AI agents to converse directly to find mutually suitable meeting slots, eliminating the common back-and-forth of emails. Users can simply copy the Blockit agent in their emails or message it via Slack to have the bot manage the logistics of meeting schedules.

A Personalized Assistant in the Digital Age

Blockit functions like a virtual executive assistant, capable of adapting to personalized scheduling nuances.” By providing detailed instructions on meeting priorities—such as designating nonnegotiable appointments versus flexible ones—the system can tailor its scheduling. The AI even prioritizes meetings based on the tone of an email, as illustrated by its ability to favor formal requests over casual ones.

Context Graphs and Big Data Potential

Blockit leverages the concept of “context graphs,” a term popularized by Foundation Capital investors Jaya Gupta and Ashu Garg in their analysis of AI’s future in business. By capturing the underlying rationale behind scheduling decisions, Blockit taps into a multibillion-dollar opportunity of transforming implicit human logic into actionable business intelligence.

Early Adoption by Leading Firms

Already, Blockit has earned the trust of more than 200 organizations, including innovative companies like Together.ai, the fintech leader Brex, and robotics pioneer Rogo. Venture firms such as a16z, Accel, and Index have also come on board. The platform is available on a free 30-day trial, with pricing set at $1,000 per annum for individuals and $5,000 for team licenses, supporting multiple users.

The Future of Intelligent Scheduling

Kais Khimji is poised to redefine professional scheduling using advanced AI—transforming an essential, yet inefficient, aspect of work life into a streamlined and dynamic process. Blockit represents not just a technological innovation, but a shift in how businesses can effectively manage time in a data-driven world.

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Women Make Up A Majority Of The EU’s Science And Technology Workforce But The Real Gap Is Elsewhere

by News Editor

June 25, 2026

Women now make up the majority of the EU’s science and technology workforce. According to Eurostat, in 2025, more than 81.6 million people aged 15 to 74 were employed in science and technology occupations across the EU. Of those, 52.5% were women, equal to 42.8 million women. The number of women in these occupations rose by 27.9% compared with 2015, an increase of more than 9.3 million over a decade.

On the surface, the numbers resemble progress. However, Eurostat’s category requires context before that figure can be read accurately. The data refers to HRST, or Human Resources in Science and Technology, specifically people employed in science and technology occupations. These are roles where the main tasks require professional or technical knowledge in physical and life sciences, but also in social sciences and humanities. That definition is wider and broader than engineering, ICT, laboratory science, or high-tech research alone.

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Zooming In

The gender picture changes once the data moves from a wider definition of the workforce to the narrower scientist-and-engineer (research and manufacturing) subgroup.

Scientists and engineers represented almost a quarter of all people employed in science and technology in the EU in 2025. Eurostat describes scientists and engineers as often being the innovators at the centre of technology-led development, making them an important subgroup to focus on separately.

Women accounted for only 40.8% of scientists and engineers in 2025, despite making up more than half of the wider category. That share has increased by a mere 0.5 percentage points over the past decade. The absolute number of women working as scientists and engineers rose from 5.3 million in 2015 to 8.2 million in 2025, despite the push from national and international organisations to increase the number of women in the field. Europe has expanded the number of women in science and technology occupations over ten years. However, that expansion has not extended equally into the scientist-and-engineer subgroup, where much of Europe’s research and innovation work is conducted.

In 2025, of the 39.4 million women aged 25 to 64 working in science and technology occupations in the EU, 35.5 million worked in service activities. Only 2.7 million worked in manufacturing. Women accounted for 57.5% of science and technology employment in services, but only 31.3% in manufacturing.

In 2025, the highest shares of women employed in science and technology occupations were recorded in Latvia at 62.4%, followed by Hungary’s Great Plain and North region at 61.1%, Estonia at 60.5%, Poland’s Central macroregion at 60.4%, and Lithuania at 60.3%. No EU country recorded a majority of women among science and technology workers in manufacturing.

Break-down

Eurostat’s figures measure employment in broad science and technology occupations. They do not show job security, pay levels, management roles, promotion rates, research leadership, or whether women are concentrated in junior or senior workplace positions.

The classification of “senior” also requires additional explanation. Eurostat reports that 45.9% of science and technology workers aged 25 to 64 in the EU were classified as “senior” HRST in 2025. In this dataset, “senior” refers to workers aged 45 to 64. It does not mean senior manager, senior researcher, team lead, or decision-maker.

A high female share in the wider Human Resource Science and Technology (HRST) category does not parallel equal representation across scientists, engineers, manufacturing roles, senior posts, pay, research funding, or decision-making. These figures also reflect the occupational mix inside each country or region, not only structural progress across all areas of science and technology.

The Case Of Cyprus

Eurostat data places Cyprus’s overall science and technology employment at 37.2% of the labour force in 2025, slightly above the EU-27 figure of 36.9%, and above Greece at 26.8%, Malta at 33.9%, and Turkey at 18.2%. This figure covers the total share of the labour force employed in science and technology across all genders.

Progress Or Work-in-Progress?

52.5% in the broad category. 40.8% among scientists and engineers. 31.3% in manufacturing. Europe’s gender gap in science and technology hasn’t closed yet, and there is still work to be done to encourage and support more women to enter the field, especially in research and manufacturing.

Let’s not wait another decade for another couple of percentage points of hope.