The ring, the spark, and the night it lives in.

Faisal M. Wallan is the founder of NOVA and the face of the company. He leads its business, partnerships and people, and sets its direction: an assistant that does the work on your computer, keeps your secrets on your own machine, and speaks Arabic as a first language rather than a translation. He was the first person outside the product's maker to run Nova every day, and the customer build exists because of what he asked of it. Based in Riyadh, he represents NOVA with partners, press and the Saudi and Gulf market, and steers its path from the Mac to Windows and the phone.

Hatem Abusitta is the co-founder of NOVA. A filmmaker and entertainment entrepreneur in Riyadh, he has spent his career in production, marketing and content, running several companies at once from a laptop. Nova began at his desk: a colleague for the computer that could make the deck, keep the files, take the meeting notes, watch the machine's health and, in time, run a company. He leads the product and the technology, and he is the reason Nova hears and speaks Arabic like a person, asks before she spends, and reports in a line instead of a page. He still runs his companies with her every day.