Rami Alhamad is the founder of Alma, an AI nutrition-coaching platform that turns meal tracking into a conversation informed by individual preferences, habits, and goals. He previously founded PUSH, an athletic-performance wearables company acquired by WHOOP in 2021, and subsequently became WHOOP’s vice president of product.
Alhamad studied mechatronics engineering at the University of Waterloo and earned a master’s degree in engineering systems and computing at the University of Guelph. He also coauthored research on a robotic hand exoskeleton for stroke rehabilitation. At PUSH, he developed wearable technology that measured velocity, power, force, and acceleration to help athletes and coaches assess strength training.
He founded Alma in 2024 with cofounder Adam Noffsinger, applying his experience in physiological measurement to the everyday friction of nutrition tracking. Announcing the company, he rejected food-logging systems that turn meals into tedious numerical chores. Alma instead accepts voice, photographs, and text, combining conversational coaching with feedback tailored to each person.
Ideas shaping Alma
- Food quality beyond calories. Alhamad developed the Alma Score with academic adviser Eric Rimm to assess nutritional quality beyond calorie and macronutrient totals.
- Constrained, staged AI workflows. Alma breaks food recognition and nutritional assessment into separate tasks: it can immediately display a recognized ingredient in its iOS app while matching it against USDA nutrition data in the background. The approach reduces the burden on individual model calls while making the product feel faster.
- Persistent, user-editable memory. Alma retains relevant preferences, habits, and goals while allowing users to inspect and delete stored details. Direct feedback, tracking streaks, proactive insights, and multimodal food tracking help the team assess accuracy and engagement.
- Differentiation beyond foundation models. Alhamad emphasizes product design, trusted partnerships, community, and distinctive user-generated data as more durable advantages than access to widely available models.
A founder in residence at Mila and venture partner at Antler, Alhamad also advocates stronger Canadian AI commercialization, including accessible computing infrastructure, practical public procurement, and greater founder involvement in policymaking.
