The Caribbean’s first AI company was sparked by a trip to the Market

Conversations with Caribbean Minds

In the first edition of Conversations with Caribbean Minds, we sit down with Adrian Dunkley, Founder and CEO of StarApple AI, the Caribbean’s first artificial intelligence company. He shares the story of how a childhood moment with his grandmother and a strange purple fruit ignited his lifelong curiosity and led him to build one of the region’s most transformative technology companies.

Interviewer:
Hi Adrian, thank you for taking the time to speak with us. We’ve been looking forward to this conversation for a while.

Adrian Dunkley:
Thank you for having me. I’m always excited to talk about AI, especially when it comes to what’s possible here in the Caribbean.

Interviewer:
StarApple AI has become a name that people recognize across the region. What inspired you to start it in the first place?

Adrian:
It came from wanting to prove that intelligence could be homegrown. The Caribbean has always been filled with brilliant and creative minds, but for a long time, we were conditioned to think that world-class technology had to come from somewhere else. I didn’t accept that. I wanted to build a company that could stand alongside the world’s best but still feel uniquely Caribbean. StarApple AI became that bridge between creativity and science, between what we imagine and what we can build.

Interviewer:
The name itself, StarApple AI, feels poetic. What’s the story behind it?

Adrian:
It actually goes back to my grandmother. One day, when I was a child, she came home from the market with this tough, purplish fruit. She told me it was a special apple. Now, apples were my favorite fruit, so I was expecting an Otahiti. When I saw it wasn’t, I was disappointed. She smiled, handed me a knife, and said, “Just open it and be patient.”

When I cut into it, I saw this perfect star pattern spiraling inside. It was stunning. That moment taught me something I’ve never forgotten to look beyond the surface. To see what’s hidden beneath. It was the first spark of my love for science and science fiction. That curiosity took me to university to study mathematics and physics, to research, and eventually to entrepreneurship. When it came time to name the company, I didn’t even have to think twice. StarApple represented that lesson. The beauty and power that live inside things most people overlook.

Interviewer:
That’s beautiful. So, for those who might not be familiar, what exactly does StarApple AI do today?

Adrian:
We build intelligent systems that make businesses smarter and societies stronger. From finance and insurance to tourism and national security, we design products that learn and adapt. But our real focus is on people. We build the culture, the training, and the understanding that allow organizations to actually use AI responsibly and effectively. Our work is part technology, part transformation.

Interviewer:
Why do you think the Caribbean can compete in AI on a global level?

Adrian:
Because we’ve always been innovators. We’ve done more with less for centuries. Creativity is our greatest natural resource. And AI rewards creativity. The Caribbean has everything it needs to lead, but we need to believe that our ideas belong on the global stage. Once we pair our cultural imagination with modern tools and data, we’ll redefine what innovation from this region means.

Interviewer:
Looking back, what moments or milestones stand out to you the most in this journey?

Adrian:
There have been many, but I’d say launching SportsBrain, the first sports AI lab in the Caribbean, was a big one. Then there’s SECTION9 a non-profit AI Lab, this year we used AI Agentics to predict the Jamaican General Election within 2 seats and 0.2% of the vote percentages, very proud of the team for that one. We’ve built more than 150 AI products, trained over a thousand professionals, and supported projects across finance, education and crime prevention. But what really stands out to me is when young people come up to me and say, “I didn’t know we could do this here.” That’s the shift that matters, that is what fuels me moving forward.

Interviewer:
Did you ever feel like you were too early? I mean, when you started, there weren’t really other AI companies around.

Adrian:
Oh, absolutely. I felt early almost every day. There was no roadmap for AI in the Caribbean. No investors looking in this direction, no government frameworks, and very few universities teaching it. A lot of people saw AI as a distant future, the amount times I got the Terminator movie joke. But I knew we already had the raw materials here. Now this new wave of AI is very compute intensive and needs alot of money, we couldn’t compete with that, but we launched before that. ML, RL and reality engines are what we can do locally without needing the budget of a Fortune 1000 company. I’ve learned that innovation never arrives at a convenient time, it starts when someone decides to act. So yes, I was early, but I prefer it that way. Being early means you get to build the foundation, not just follow the blueprint later. What we are seeing entering the market now is what we were doing in 2020.

Interviewer:
Wait, what is a reality engine?

Adrian:
It’s what I’ve been working on for most of my adult life, an AI system that’s fully confined to the physical laws of reality and quantum mechanics. My hope is that it will solve the hallucination problem facing LLMs, but to be completely transparent I don’t see LLMs as the future of AI and definitely not AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). AGI would be a form of AI that can learn anything even without us providing data for it to learn on, closer to our human capabilities.

Interviewer:
Do you think AI will ever take over the world?

Adrian:
No. I think AI will integrate into our lives just like language or mathematics did. It won’t replace humanity, it will extend it. The real issue isn’t whether AI will control us, but whether we’ll use it intentionally to control other people. AI amplifies what we give it, if we fill it with fear and bias, it will reflect that. But if we fill it with creativity, empathy, and purpose, it becomes a tool for good. I am more worried about humans with powerful AI at their disposal, just as AI can save you hours of work a week and multiple your best triats, it can turn on bad actor into an army of bad tech.

Interviewer:
That brings me to something you’ve spoken about before, Artful Intelligence. What exactly does that mean?

Adrian:
Artful Intelligence is my philosophy on how we should use AI. Creativity is the raw fuel. Technology is the machinery. Decision-making is the conversion process that turns inspiration into impact. Cold automation is not the objective, human creativity powered by data and expertise is. The most advanced form of intelligence is still imagination. AI just helps us organize and amplify it.

Interviewer:
You’ve spoken often about using local resources. Why is it so important for you to have an AI company in the Caribbean using Caribbean data?

Adrian:
Because context is everything. Data is not neutral, it carries our language, our behaviour, and our identity. If all the systems we use are trained on foreign data, they’ll never fully understand us. How we speak, how we buy, how we live, all of that matters. Having StarApple AI here ensures that the systems we build reflect our people and our reality. Innovation is the goal but not at the expense of digital independence. We can’t afford to let others define our intelligence for us.

Interviewer:
And looking ahead, how do you see the next decade of AI shaping the Caribbean?

Adrian:
I see a Caribbean that exports intelligence instead of importing it. One where our data powers global models in climate research, healthcare, and financial inclusion. I see young developers from Kingston, Bridgetown, and Port of Spain building tools that solve global problems. AI will touch every industry here, but the real change will be cultural. People will begin to see themselves as creators of intelligence, not just consumers of it. This opens up the informal economy to global expansion, and becoming formal of course.

Interviewer:
You’ve spoken with a lot of passion and patience. What keeps you grounded through it all?

Adrian:
That memory of my grandmother handing me that star apple. Every time I face a challenge, I think about that day. The fruit looked tough and uninviting on the outside, but inside it held a world of beauty. It reminds me to always look deeper. That’s what innovation is about. It’s not about what something looks like, it’s about what it can become once you open it. StarApple AI carries that message. Seeing beyond the surface. Building beyond the expected. My hope is the first Caribbean AI Startup, StarApple AI, becomes one of one thousand in the next 5 years.

Interviewer:
Adrian, thank you for your time and your insight. Conversations like this remind us why innovation in the Caribbean matters.

Adrian:
Thank you. It’s an honour to represent what’s possible here. The Caribbean is full of brilliance. We just need to keep opening it.