Core Team
Maxim Makatchev
CEO / Co-founder
Maxim was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
He holds a PhD from Cargnegie Mellon University,
and has contributed to such areas as
dialogue systems, AI in education, and human–robot
interaction. Seeking to see research applied in
the real world, he joined the MIT spinoff Jibo as
the first engineer on the conversational AI team,
where he helped build a character-driven voice robot
that was named one of TIME Magazine's Inventions of
the Year in 2017.
After helping build the voice-based gaming startup Volley,
Maxim left San Francisco for Japan as the first applicant
of the Osaka Startup Visa in 2019. Soon after,
he co-founded susuROBO with the goal of making advances
in AI accessible and useful in everyday life,
including children and older adults.
Ryo Chikada
Co-founder / Advisor
Ryo Chikada is originally from Tokyo.
He earned a master's degree in Mathematics from the
Graduate School of Science at Hokkaido University in 2000.
He went on to work at multiple IT startups in Sapporo,
where he gained end-to-end experience spanning engineering
and business development, contributing to the growth of
products and organizations from both technical and business
perspectives.
He later served as Head of the Kansai Office at
Ecomott Inc., where he played a key role in business
expansion and contributed to the company's IPO.
In 2018, he founded TMKF LLC,
through which he provides consulting and advisory
services, primarily in the IoT and AI domains, to support
companies in business development and growth.
In 2021, he co-founded susuROBO Inc.
with the vision of enabling natural and engaging
human-AI interaction.
Amir Harati
Co-founder / AI Lead
Amir was born in Iran and earned his PhD from Temple University,
where he conducted research in speech recognition, acoustic modeling,
and the automated analysis of EEG data using deep learning.
He played a key role in the development
of the TUH EEG Corpus, now the world's largest publicly available EEG dataset,
which has contributed significantly to advances in automated
medical signal interpretation.
After completing his doctoral research, Amir moved into industry to
bring academic work into real-world applications.
He joined the social robotics pioneer Jibo, Inc.
as a senior machine learning engineer, leading voice AI development.
He later took on a principal role at Ellipsis Health,
where he led the development of voice-based mental health screening technologies
capable of detecting signs of depression and anxiety through acoustic analysis.
He joined Maxim Makatchev and Ryo Chikada to co-found susuROBO, leading the AI development efforts.
Suzuna Kimura
Customer Success
Suzuna graduated from the School of International Studies
at Kwansei Gakuin University in 2024 and has a long-standing
interest in languages and different cultures. When her planned
study-abroad program was canceled due to COVID-19, she looked
for other ways to gain international experience and joined an
apparel design studio in New York as an intern, where she experienced
everyday communication in a cross-cultural setting.
She spent about six months as an intern at susuROBO and joined the company
full-time in 2025. She is now in charge of
Customer Success,
supporting both Japanese and international users.
Ayako Hei
Content and Community
Ayako graduated from Hyogo Prefectural Hyogo High School
and Kwansei Gakuin Junior College. With over 40 years of
experience in early childhood education,
she has worked closely with children and caregivers,
observing human growth and emotional development in practice.
She has also interviewed more than 20,000 individuals
as a corporate interviewer, building a strong foundation
in listening and articulating people's thoughts and feelings.
Ayako hosts one of Japan's longest-running
podcasts and is active as a VTuber,
creating content focused on
personal growth and inner experiences.
Her work also includes supporting the launch of
childcare facilities and providing counseling
services for childcare professionals, with a
continued focus on education and human development.