Axel Rives is the co-founder and CEO of Scanon AI, a privacy tool that automatically finds and blurs personal information like faces, license plates and card numbers in photos, videos and documents before they’re shared. A privacy advocate turned operator, Axel started out in digital rights advocacy and in 2024 founded Unlimited Coverage Cybersecurity, an e-commerce company selling private phones and secure communication tools.

Axel Rives is the co-founder and CEO of Scanon AI, a privacy tool that automatically finds and blurs personal information like faces, license plates and card numbers in photos, videos and documents before they’re shared. A privacy advocate turned operator, Axel started out in digital rights advocacy and in 2024 founded Unlimited Coverage Cybersecurity, an e-commerce company selling private phones and secure communication tools. Running it taught him that the biggest privacy risk isn’t how we send things, it’s what we send. That insight became Scanon, which he built with his co-founder, computer vision researcher Pranaw Otti, after the two met through Y Combinator’s co-founder matching platform. Axel is based in Washington, D.C. and holds an MBA from Loyola University Chicago.