Habs Kim

Please note: These bios are autogenerated and designed to function like a wikipedia page NOT a sales page. If something is factually incorrect we are happy to update or take down.

Habs Kim is the co-founder and CEO of Xylo. Born to a family that moved from South Korea to the UK, she grew up between the two countries before building a career at the intersection of government and technology.

Before founding Xylo, Kim worked on how public institutions adopt software, an experience that convinced her the planning system's problems were operational rather than political. She and co-founder Dermot O'Riordan spent more than 300 hours shadowing planning officers inside councils before writing production code, mapping where officers actually lose time.

That fieldwork became the basis of Xylo, which builds AI agents that take on the paperwork around planning applications while leaving decisions with the officer. Under Kim's leadership the company signed Leeds City Council as a design partner and raised a £2.8M pre-seed round led by CapitalT in 2026.