Dr Sanj Ahilan
Dr Sanj Ahilan is a British-Tamil AI researcher and entrepreneur, co-founder and Chief Research Officer of Solve Intelligence, the London-based AI platform for intellectual property professionals. His background sits at the intersection of machine learning research and practical AI systems — an unusual combination that has allowed him to build AI models purpose-built for the technical and legal complexity of patent work.
Ahilan completed a PhD in machine learning at University College London, where his research earned him awards at top AI conferences and led to the development of widely-used open-source code for fine-tuning large language models. He holds an MSci in Physics from the University of Cambridge. Prior to co-founding Solve Intelligence, he worked at Magic Carpet AI and at Huawei Technologies, where he gained experience in applied AI product development at commercial scale.
In 2023, Ahilan co-founded Solve Intelligence alongside brothers Dr Chris Parsonson (CEO) and Angus Parsonson (CTO). As Chief Research Officer, he leads the development of Solve's proprietary AI models, which are trained specifically for patent language, legal reasoning, and the technical subject matter of patent claims — spanning software, hardware, life sciences, chemistry, and more. His central conviction is that general-purpose language models are fundamentally unsuitable for professional patent work, and that purpose-built models evaluated against patent-specific benchmarks are what the industry actually needs.
Solve Intelligence has grown rapidly since its Y Combinator S23 cohort, raising a £9 million Series A in April 2025 and a £30 million Series B in December 2025, taking total funding to £40 million. The platform now serves over 400 IP teams across six continents, including DLA Piper, Perkins Coie, Siemens, and Avery Dennison. Annual recurring revenue grew more than tenfold in the twelve months to December 2025, reaching eight figures. Ahilan has described his goal as building evaluations and algorithms that bridge the gap between off-the-shelf AI and genuinely professional-grade legal content.
