Ariel Harmoko's Journey From The Racetrack To AI Innovation

Some passions reveal themselves early in life, while the path to pursuing them often takes unexpected turns. For Ariel Harmoko, co-founder and CEO of Artifact AI, those turns came literally.

At a young age, Harmoko had already made a name for himself on the race track, rising to the level of national go-karting champion. Today, he's co-founder and CEO at Artifact AI, developing an agentic accounting system that automates bookkeeping, tax filing, and reconciliation tasks while providing CFO-level financial insights.

The road from karting champion to startup founder, as you can imagine, was not a straight one. It took Harmoko from the Indonesian racetrack to performing medical research at the University of Cambridge, then from JP Morgan Chase to building something of his own — a story of how seemingly disparate experiences can lay a firm foundation for innovation.

The Discipline Required of a Champion: Lessons from the Track

Harmoko's career began far from the tech world. At just eight years old, he was already a competitive go-kart racer, traveling globally from his home in Indonesia to compete in the World Series Karting Championship. By age 13, he had become a three-time national karting champion — an achievement that taught him invaluable lessons about focus and perseverance.

"Standing on that first-place podium, trophy in hand, I realized discipline isn't taught — it's earned every lap," Harmoko recalls.

These early racing experiences also contributed to Harmoko's methodical approach to solving challenges. The precision required in racing — where split-second decisions matter and consistent performance is essential — instilled in him a decisive, confident mindset that proved invaluable in his later work.

The Pivot to Healthcare AI

Away from the track, Harmoko developed an aptitude for mathematics and computing, interests that would soon consume his time and empower him to act on his visions.

The opportunity to leverage these skills came during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Stirred by empathy and unable to sit back any longer, 15-year-old Harmoko began obsessing over how he might apply his mathematical skills to healthcare challenges.

While he still felt moved by the ongoing crisis, he eventually chose to focus on another critical healthcare need: improving diagnostic imaging. Working independently, he developed a CNN-variational autoencoder algorithm — a type of algorithm that can recognize patterns and recreate cleaner versions of noisy or incomplete data — that was designed to enhance the clarity of brain MRI scans and help radiologists detect tumors that might otherwise be missed.

Seeking expert feedback on his work, Harmoko sent his proposal to 20 professors across the UK. Among the 19 who responded was Professor Alan Blackwell, who was impressed enough to invite the young innovator to Jesus College — one of the constituent colleges that make up the University of Cambridge. As a result, Harmoko became the youngest machine learning researcher at Cambridge.

There, he worked alongside medical researchers at Lyzeum (a spin-off lab founded by Cambridge professors) and focused on using AI models to achieve the early diagnosis of celiac disease.

Building Corporate Experience at JP Morgan Chase

Before founding his own venture, Harmoko also interned at JP Morgan Chase. There, he led a team of AI researchers and software engineers to develop a working internal GPT model for software developers and equity derivatives traders.

This experience was another opportunity for Harmoko to deploy artificial intelligence systems capable of processing complex information and making critical assessments. It bridged his background in academic research with practical business applications, and it provided crucial insights into how AI solutions could be deployed in enterprise environments — particularly those saddled with manual, repetitive processes that are ripe for innovation.

Artifact AI: Transforming Accounting Through Intelligent Automation

As co-founder and CEO of Artifact AI, Harmoko is applying his technical background to modernize accounting workflows. The startup's flagship solution, Arti, is an AI-powered digital accountant that automates the bookkeeping process: automatically collecting documents like invoices and receipts from emails and cloud storage, processing transactions in real time, performing reconciliations, and filing tax returns with authorities like the HMRC, which has officially recognized Artifact AI as an authorized digital filing provider.

Beyond these automation features, Arti is also a financial intelligence tool that delivers insights into key business metrics, generates financial health assessments, identifies cash flow issues, and provides actionable recommendations to improve financial performance — giving smaller businesses access to the kind of insights typically available only to companies with dedicated financial analysts.

The system connects with existing financial infrastructure through API integrations, integrating with popular systems like Stripe and PayPal to automatically track transactions, inventory, and revenue. It's an overhaul of the traditionally fragmented approach of bouncing between multiple separate tools to complete basic workflows, creating more capacity for high-value advisory services.

By reducing manual effort and error rates, Artifact AI helps businesses improve accuracy while reducing costs — eliminating the need for expensive accounting services while maintaining data security.

Looking Forward: Growth and Impact

Ariel Harmoko's plans don't stop with Arti. He aims to scale Artifact AI into a full-fledged enterprise while continuing to refine and expand its flagship solution's capabilities.

Meanwhile, he's dedicating much of his time to nurturing upcoming tech talent. Having previously led AI societies that organized student hackathons across the U.K. and helped identify promising entrepreneurs for EWOR — a highly competitive accelerator program that selects just 35 participants from over 50,000 applications — Harmoko continues this mission today. Now, drawing on his own background as an immigrant founder, he focuses on mentoring STEM entrepreneurs from underrepresented backgrounds.

He's also shared his insights at several prominent venues like Google, where he discussed how Artifact AI is transforming accounting processes, and Cambridge Seminars College, where he spoke on the applications of AI in healthcare.

From racing circuits to research labs to the entrepreneurial world, Harmoko's path should serve as inspiration for those hoping to channel their excellence in seemingly unrelated fields into impactful ventures in another.