AI project management, built by the team who built Microsoft Project

We know how projects work and why tools fall behind. Every plan, tracker and status report depends on someone remembering to update it, and that's usually someone's fourth priority. Empwr removes that step. It builds the project plan from your team's meetings, tickets and documents, and keeps it current without anyone typing it in.

The Team

Empwr.ai is a distributed team based in Seattle, the San Francisco Bay Area, Portland and Santa Barbara, and emerged from stealth in October 2025. Our CEO and CPO spent a combined 35 years working on Microsoft Project, our CPO went on to run product for Atlassian's Server and Data Center business, and all three co-founders held VP or Director roles at Microsoft.

Ludovic Hauduc

Co-founder, CEO

18 years working on Microsoft Project. Ludo was also Corporate VP of Platform Engineering at Microsoft and VP of AI Infrastructure at Meta, and brings deep experience in project management software, AI and leading engineering at scale.

Chris Pirich

Co-founder, CTO

Ex Partner Director of Development at Xbox and Microsoft. Chris is an accomplished startup advisor for companies like Pioneer Square Labs, Mighty AI (acq Uber) Hulu, Kevala, TeamSense, Convoy, Rover, TraceMe (acq Nike), and Code.org.

Keshav Puttaswamy

Co-founder, CPO

17 years working on Microsoft Project. Keshav was Director of Product at Microsoft across Project, Yammer and Windows ES, and has led product at Atlassian (Server and Data Center) and Meta (Messaging Platform). He has spent his career building the tools teams use to plan and track their work.

Matthew Gilk

Sr. Software Engineer

Former startup CTO and senior software engineer at early stage startups and breakthrough unicorns including Avant and Groupon. Matt is a talented full stack engineer with a talent for design.

Jonas Erthal

Sr. Software Engineer

Ex Microsoft and JPMorgan Chase. Founder of an AI based sales simulation tool sold to University of Washington. Jonas is an AI software engineer who has been programming since the age of 11.

Chris Rodde

CMO

25+ years building and scaling technology businesses. Chris led growth and lifecycle marketing at Microsoft, held growth leadership roles at Marco Polo, and co-founded SeniorHomes.com, which he built and sold. He holds an MBA from Wharton and brings a systems-first, AI-native approach to marketing.