At 22 years old, a young person from Recife creates an artificial intelligence startup with a team barely over 25, serves giants like Bayer and Ipiranga, earns millions without taking a cent from investors, and transforms a young company into a national AI phenomenon.

Written by Valdemar Medeiros

Published on 22/06/2026 at 11:18

Updated on 22/06/2026 at 11:19

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Loomi, created by former UFPE students in Recife, earned R$ 8.6 million in 2024, serves 84 clients, and advances with AI for large companies.

Loomi, a technology company created in Recife in 2020, has established itself as one of the most striking cases of the new generation of Brazilian artificial intelligence startups. According to EXAME, the company serves 84 clients in Brazil, Europe, and the United States and includes names like Basf, Bayer, Neoenergia, Sem Parar, Eurofarma, and Ipiranga in its portfolio. Financially, revenue increased from R$ 6.5 million in 2023 to R$ 8.6 million in 2024, a 34% growth that placed the company at the 109th position in the 5 million to 30 million reais category of the EXAME Business Expansion 2025 ranking.

Behind this growth is a group formed mainly by former students of the Federal University of Pernambuco. Leading the operation is Gabriel Albuquerque, who opened the company at 22 years old and, according to the CIn of UFPE, was recognized in 2024 as one of the highlights of Forbes Under 30. EXAME itself reports that Loomi has 107 employees with an average age of just 24 years, a rare portrait of a young company competing for contracts with large corporations.

From the public university in Recife to the portfolio of large multinationals

The origin of Loomi helps explain why the company gained traction so early. According to Movimento Econômico, the story began when Neoenergia sought out the innovation environment linked to the UFPE Computer Center to develop technological solutions and ended up finding the team that would later give rise to the startup.

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Team with an average age of 24 bets on autonomy and search for purpose

One of the elements that most attract attention at Loomi is the team’s profile. EXAME states that the company has an average age of 24 years, while Gabriel Albuquerque himself appears in the survey at 27 years, although he founded the operation at 22.

The data helps support the company’s main discourse: a company dominated by very young professionals, but already involved in large-scale projects for major clients.

In the report, Gabriel summarizes this generational trait by stating that his team tends to question the purpose of the work and the transformation generated by each delivery. The phrase used by the executive synthesizes this culture: “We never do anything without understanding why”.

External recognition reinforced this discourse in 2024. CIn at UFPE reported that Gabriel Albuquerque was included among the highlights of Forbes Under 30, a ranking dedicated to Brazilian entrepreneurs and creators under 30 years old. In the publication, the center notes that he acts as CEO and partner of Loomi and associates the achievement with the professional growth accumulated in recent years.

Project for Mondelez and sales forecast for Bis show the type of AI that took Loomi to another level

The best way to understand what Loomi delivers to the market is to look at the projects mentioned by EXAME. In one of the highlighted cases, the company collaborated with Mondelez in developing a predictive artificial intelligence capable of estimating chocolate Bis sales by channel and by day, with 90% accuracy.

In retail and industry operations, a rate of this magnitude is strategic because it affects production planning, distribution, and supply.

Loomi, created by former UFPE students in Recife, earned R$ 8.6 million in 2024, serves 84 clients, and advances with AI for large companies. — Eduarda Sousa and Gabriel Albuquerque, two of the founders of Loomi/Disclosure

EXAME also reports that Loomi operates in two main areas: generative AI and predictive AI. Instead of selling artificial intelligence as a generic package, the company says it seeks to understand the client’s concrete situation before designing the solution.

This positioning helps explain why the startup managed to transition from a young structure to contracts with companies that, in many cases, would traditionally turn to larger and more established consultancies.

Recife strengthens Loomi as an innovation showcase outside the Rio-São Paulo axis

The growth of Loomi also reinforces the position of Recife as one of the main technology hubs in the country. EXAME notes that the company is now located in Porto Digital, an innovation hub located in Recife Antigo that houses around 400 companies.

Symbolically, the company’s trajectory also projects the role of the public university in this process. The CIn of UFPE states that Gabriel Albuquerque is a graduate of Computer Engineering and highlights the training received at the center as an important part of his entrepreneurial journey.

The executive himself, in an account reproduced by the portal, associates his professional transformation with entering UFPE and the computing environment at CIn.

With 84 clients, annual growth of 34%, international presence, and contracts with major brands, Loomi consolidates itself as a relevant expansion case emerging from the Brazilian Northeast. More than a startup of young people, the company has come to represent a business model where technical training, local ecosystem, and applied artificial intelligence combine to compete among the strongest names in the corporate market.

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At 22 years old, a young person from Recife creates an artificial intelligence startup with a team barely over 25, serves giants like Bayer and Ipiranga, earns millions without taking a cent from investors, and transforms a young company into a national AI phenomenon.

Loomi, created by former UFPE students in Recife, earned R$ 8.6 million in 2024, serves 84 clients, and advances with AI for large companies.

From the public university in Recife to the portfolio of large multinationals

Team with an average age of 24 bets on autonomy and search for purpose

Project for Mondelez and sales forecast for Bis show the type of AI that took Loomi to another level

Recife strengthens Loomi as an innovation showcase outside the Rio-São Paulo axis

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At 22 years old, a young person from Recife creates an artificial intelligence startup with a team barely over 25, serves giants like Bayer and Ipiranga, earns millions without taking a cent from investors, and transforms a young company into a national AI phenomenon.

Loomi, created by former UFPE students in Recife, earned R$ 8.6 million in 2024, serves 84 clients, and advances with AI for large companies.

From the public university in Recife to the portfolio of large multinationals

Team with an average age of 24 bets on autonomy and search for purpose

Project for Mondelez and sales forecast for Bis show the type of AI that took Loomi to another level

Recife strengthens Loomi as an innovation showcase outside the Rio-São Paulo axis

In the cold desert of Ladakh, where it hardly rains, engineer Sonam Wangchuk created the ice stupa, a tower that freezes winter water and stores it for irrigating crops in the spring, a simple engineering feat that mimics nature.

Almost 6,000 residents live concentrated along a single street nearly 9 km long in the interior of Poland. Houses form a continuous row, and behind them, narrow agricultural strips emerge, creating one of the most unusual rural patterns in Europe.

Libya built over 4,000 kilometers of underground pipelines to bring water from the Sahara to coastal cities in a project that the government itself called the Eighth Wonder of the World.

Chinese woman planted trees for decades while sand buried part of her house, received $5,000 from an American in 1999, and helped transform the desert into a forest of 8 million trees in China.

Desert sand, previously discarded for being too smooth for concrete, becomes an ecological brick in the United Arab Emirates, dispensing with Portland cement, curing at room temperature, and attempting to transform dunes useless for construction into raw material for a new arid engineering.

They planted a sea of eucalyptus to produce cellulose, but the monoculture turned into a green desert, dried up springs and rivers, and pushed families out of regions in Minas Gerais and Bahia.

Júlia Pimentel, an 11-year-old from Minas Gerais, independently invented a new formula to calculate the square root using simple addition and multiplication, and her method was published in one of the most important mathematical scientific journals in Brazil.

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