Stephen Ni

Stephen Ni is the co-founder of Bluma, an artificial intelligence platform for short-form video advertising, based in San Francisco, California. Prior to launching his current venture in 2025, he worked as a software engineer developing autonomous vehicle technology at Zoox, a self-driving car company acquired by Amazon. Ni is an engineering dropout from the University of Waterloo who recently led his two-employee startup into the Y Combinator Fall 2025 batch under the guidance of primary partner Harj Taggar. Alongside co-founder Alisa Wu, he is building an automated content engine that clones viral videos end-to-end, a system that has garnered media coverage in The New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. His current professional focus centers entirely on leveraging artificial intelligence to automate consumer marketing and streamline digital ad content generation for modern brands.