Company Overview
Elyse Myrans is the CEO & Founder of Tenax ai, a company that bridges the gap in property risk management. Their technology reduces the risk of physical and financial losses for both insurers and property owners in the face of extreme weather events, such as wildfire, flood and storms. Learn more at https://www.tenaxai.com/.
Can you tell us a little about your background before starting at your company?
I’ve spent 20 years in the climate and risk space. About 15 of those years were focused on sustainability strategy and reputation management — as a consultant for about a decade, as well as working in international climate policy, including on the Paris Agreement.
Before that, I earned a Bachelor of Science in Forestry and a Master’s in behavioral psychology with a focus on climate change — experiences that clearly connect.
In 2020, I joined a climate FinTech in multiple leadership roles, including Chief Operating Officer, where I helped grow the company and discovered that I love building things. That’s what I was doing before founding Tenax ai.
How did you start at your company? What were the first steps you took to get it off the ground and how did you identify the need for your product/service in the market?
Having spent so long in the climate and risk space, I worked with many different organizations and saw risk (both qualitative and quantitative) from multiple perspectives. I worked with corporates, financial institutions, utilities, and national and international policymakers.
I began to see a multidimensional picture of risk driven by climate and extreme weather. Through that work, I was exposed to the insurance industry and how it understands, models, anticipates, and prices risk related to extreme weather events, which are becoming more common in a changing climate.
I became focused on the insurance lens, recognizing how critical insurance is to our systems and economy. It’s a foundational infrastructure layer of daily life that often gets overlooked and remains relatively niche.
I knew I wanted to build something at the intersection of extreme weather risk and insurance because I saw a lack of forward-looking solutions for the industry.
To answer your question about how I got started, the missing piece was a co-founder. I wanted a partner to build with, so I set out to find that person. I was fortunate to find my co-founder, Arun, who comes from insurtech and has a PhD in applied machine learning — exactly the background I hoped for. He’s also a thoughtful and collaborative partner.
Those were the pieces that came together to allow us to start Tenax ai.
What innovations or unique features set your company apart from others in the industry?
Tenax ai provides property-level risk intelligence for insurers — serving as the underwriting verification layer that enables precise risk selection and mitigation compliance at the individual property level.
What differentiates us is our ability to transform ground-truth imagery — captured via mobile or drone — into structured, underwriting-ready risk intelligence using computer vision. We identify property characteristics, assess exposure, generate risk scoring, and provide tailored mitigation recommendations without requiring forms or self-reported questionnaires. It’s straightforward and efficient.
All outputs are time-stamped and geo-located, making the data auditable and verifiable. This allows insurers to rely on current-condition property data rather than regional proxies or inferred models.
The result is scalable, repeatable infrastructure that delivers the “last mile” of property exposure insight — data that carriers often struggle to collect efficiently on their own.
What has been the most effective strategy for scaling your business?
I’d say the biggest unlock for us has been two things.
First, our approach to product development. My co-founder and I have both helped build software ventures in highly regulated spaces. We’ve taken a conscious, careful, and rigorous approach to product development. We don’t get ahead of ourselves — we build based on what we’re seeing, experiencing, and hearing from users and design partners on the ground.
Second, working closely with those design partners. We’re not building in a vacuum. We test and iterate constantly with customers, maintaining a tight feedback loop on what works and what doesn’t, and adjusting quickly. That allows us to move fast.
Looking ahead, what are your goals for the future of your company
In the near term, our focus is deepening integration with insurance carriers and becoming embedded in underwriting workflows. We want Tenax ai to be the trusted, property-level verification layer that insurers rely on when making risk selection and mitigation decisions in high-exposure regions.
Wildfire is our initial wedge, but our platform is designed to expand across additional perils such as wind, hail, flood, and storm — wherever property-level verification improves underwriting precision.
Longer term, our goal is to standardize how ground-truth property data is captured, verified, and operationalized across the insurance ecosystem. When insurers and risk-bearing organizations need reliable, current-condition insight at the individual property level, Tenax ai should be the default infrastructure powering that decision.
