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At Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs, Tito Obaisi has honed a disciplined yet intuitive approach to finding AI startups that are redefining the tech industry. Obaisi is the director of pipeline and insights for LIFT Labs.
Since 2018, LIFT Labs has connected startup founders with Comcast leaders to develop long-term partnerships. Most recently, LIFT Labs has focused on identifying enterprise-ready AI startups, including Windsurf, LangChain, WRITER and Replit.
With AI evolving at breakneck speed, Obaisi’s finger is on the pulse to identify up-and-coming trends and concepts.
How Obaisi identifies the next big thing
Obaisi’s search for innovation is a daily practice. He reads academic papers and product release notes, and follows the engineers and researchers whose work shapes the future of AI.
He also leverages AI itself to curate his feeds and intentionally interacts with platforms that learn his preferences — engaging with updates on model releases, novel use cases and deep-dive explainers. Obaisi effectively trains search engines to highlight the most relevant news for him.
Perhaps his most impactful source, though, is the people building or working on AI every day, Obaisi said. Following startups and technologists on social media keeps him aware of what’s actually happening in AI.
“AI is unique because it supports the democratization of intelligence. The number of permutations of what could be innovated on by the average person, by technical and non-technical people, is almost endless,” Obasi said.
Obaisi also credits his team’s success to Comcast’s broad internal network. He said the company’s subject matter experts provide intel and feedback he can build into his process through tight feedback loops.
His approach has yielded both triumphs and valuable lessons. Obaisi said one of LIFT Labs’ standout wins came in fall 2023, when they identified Deci, a startup optimizing compute at a time when people began wondering about global GPU scarcity. Obaisi recognized an emerging enterprise need, and Deci joined LIFT Labs’ October 2023 accelerator. Ultimately, the startup’s IP was acquired by Nvidia.
LIFT Labs has also been exploring the promise of agentic AI frameworks like AutoGPT and BabyAGI — tools that can autonomously act, not just answer queries. In previous years, Obaisi said no startup had matured into a partner ready for Fortune 50 enterprise deployment. But, come 2026, he suspects that could change, as multiple sources have called it the “year of the agent.”
Through wins and setbacks alike, Obaisi credits one throughline: listening deeply. Whether it’s gathering sentiments in Slack communities, tuning into PhD coffee breaks at conferences or field-testing new AI products in-house, he leverages real-time feedback to adapt to burgeoning trends.
Making way with top-of-the-industry founders
Beyond sourcing and vetting startups, Obaisi’s role extends to pitching LIFT Labs program to startups of interest.
“You’ll be at a conference, and you’ll walk up to a CEO who’s just raised, you know, nine figures, and they get approached every day,” Obaisi said. “You have to be able to convince them to work with your team and then have the word ‘accelerator’ applied to their company. A lot of large startups don’t imagine that as a possibility. We must be able to explain the value pretty quickly, and a big part of that is developing that personal rapport.”
Obaisi’s approach hinges on more than just the strength of being backed by Comcast — it’s about showing up in ways that founders don’t expect from corporate partners. “Being available, being helpful, being responsive,” he said, “that’s what builds trust.”
He understands that founders may be driven by vision and passion, but they’re also navigating technical pressure about their startup’s valuation and scale. He keeps that balance in mind when collaborating.
“We want them to walk away feeling like they got further than they would have without our team,” he said. “That’s the win-win we’re always aiming for.”
Obaisi’s call to innovators
Comcast may be a Fortune 50 company, but LIFT Labs is an example of the entrepreneurial spirit, Obaisi said.
From lab weeks that let employees prototype AI applications to cross-disciplinary cohorts that tackle product bottlenecks, Comcast has multiple stakeholders that, like LIFT Labs, are asking the question: How do we make innovation easier?
Obaisi has not just been struck by the entrepreneurial innovation at Comcast, but also his colleagues’ excitement to work with the companies that LIFT Labs identifies. He includes that enthusiasm in the list of reasons why startups should consider collaborating with LIFT Labs.
“Comcast is a place where we are trying to build the future of connectivity, the future of entertainment, the future of connection between people – and we are always looking for ways to engage with the innovation ecosystem on how to create that,” he said. “Whether it’s in our mobile group, in the next generation of entertainment platforms, or a new Universal theme park experience, we are figuring out how to facilitate the next evolution of the ways that we connect with each other as people.”
“Anybody who’s interested in that, in the startup ecosystem, and has really interesting ideas, we’re really open to work with all categories of companies in those spaces.”
