IQAI Team

The team behind AI reliance infrastructure.

IQAI is built around a simple requirement: before organizations rely on AI-assisted reasoning, they need systems that can inspect it, structure it, and make its failure modes visible.

Founding Team

Operational AI instrumentation meets governance assurance.

IQAI brings together live crisis-systems experience, AI reasoning-control instrumentation, cybersecurity, audit discipline, continuity planning, and institutional governance.

Nicolas Holm

Founder / Principal Architect

Nicolas Holm has spent his career building complex technical systems that turn difficult information into decisions people can act on.

His work spans geospatial AI, crisis mapping, public-health intelligence, humanitarian operations, environmental protection, security, and large-scale decision-support systems. Across these fields, the pattern has been consistent: make information visible, usable, and reliable when bad data can delay action, hide risk, or create false confidence.

He now applies that same systems discipline to AI, building tools that evaluate model reasoning, compare answers, score evidence, expose failure modes, and preserve decision records that can be reviewed.

Nicolas is the author of Data at the Edge, a five-book Geospatial AI series with a foreword by Leonardo DiCaprio, focused on trusted data for real-world decisions. He also appears in several episodes of RAISE, an AI documentary series screening at the UN AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva in July 2026, where he discusses the future of AI and humanity from the perspective of a field-tested systems builder.

AI Systems Builder Geospatial AI Mission-Critical Dashboards Decision-Support Systems Evidence Discipline

Read expanded bio

Selected background and accomplishments

Created one of the world's earliest live GIS dashboards for COVID-19 risk awareness, built at the earliest stage of the pandemic.
Created a map of Tibet for the Dalai Lama.
Developed crisis-navigation maps during the war in Ukraine to help civilians locate bomb shelters, find fuel, and navigate toward safer areas.
Developed geospatial tools supporting U.S. veteran suicide-prevention efforts.
Supported Red Cross-related crisis work and Greenpeace environmental campaigns.
Created Amazon protection mapping used to discourage oil and gas drilling in sensitive rainforest areas.
Designed large-scale GIS applications, dashboards, and operational decision systems across crisis, humanitarian, public-health, environmental, and geospatial contexts.
His GIS work was showcased by the BBC.
Teaches geospatial data through UNITAR CIFAL York University.
Published papers on AI reliability, reasoning control, and evidence discipline.
Presented or contributed work across Harvard, Concordia, CIFAL York / UNITAR, humanitarian platforms, research communities, and technical audiences.
Created more than 1,000 GIS applications and dashboards, with more than 2 million map interactions across public-facing and field-facing tools.

Sylvain Viau

Co-Founder / Chief Governance & Assurance Officer

Sylvain Viau brings four decades of experience in information technology, cybersecurity, business continuity, emergency management, corporate audit, and governance assurance.

His career spans senior security, audit, infrastructure recovery, and project leadership roles for major public and private organizations, including the Canadian Space Agency, Hydro-Québec, National Bank, Laurentian Bank, Alcan, Gaz Métro, Cirque du Soleil, CN, the Government of Canada, and other institutional environments.

A certified ISO master lead auditor, implementer, and trainer, Sylvain has led and advised teams across information security, business continuity, cyber readiness, anti-bribery controls, outsourcing management, forensic review, and governance frameworks including ISO, COBIT, CMMI, maturity models, and readiness assessments.

He also served 37 years in the Canadian Forces, retiring as a Signal Lieutenant-Colonel. His military work included project leadership for National Defence, including intervention-force readiness for electronic warfare and intelligence operations. His project-management practices were recognized as a model of excellence by the Auditor General of Canada.

As co-founder of IQAI, Sylvain anchors the governance and assurance side of the company: helping translate AI reasoning-control instruments into systems that can be audited, governed, and trusted by serious organizations.

ISO Audit Cybersecurity Business Continuity Governance Assurance

Why This Founding Team Matters

AI reliance needs builders and assurance leadership.

IQAI is built around two complementary founder strengths: technical AI systems architecture, and the governance discipline required to make those instruments usable in serious institutional environments.

Architecture from the field.

Nicolas brings the builder's side of IQAI: applied AI systems architecture, hands-on development, crisis-systems discipline, evidence logic, and the ability to turn abstract AI risk into operational software.

Assurance from institutions.

Sylvain brings the governance side: ISO audit, cybersecurity, continuity planning, emergency management, and decades of experience operating inside high-trust organizations.

Built for real adoption.

Together, the founding team connects advanced AI control systems with the audit, security, and governance expectations organizations need before they can rely on AI.