Maxime Guilbot

Founder and CEO Ekohe

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

Maxime Guilbot is a French engineer who built his career in China. After a master’s in engineering at Centrale Lille Institute he moved to Shanghai, took a second master’s in artificial intelligence and pattern recognition at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and worked as an R&D manager at Labbrand, a Shanghai brand consultancy. He founded Ekohe there in 2007. The firm is a digital product design and engineering studio, and it has since become genuinely international rather than merely export-oriented, with offices in Tokyo, Paris, Vancouver and New York. Its current practice is built around AI-native product development, alongside HIPAA-compliant software engineering for healthcare clients out of New York — a specialisation that requires regulatory competence rather than only design and engineering capability.

Career Highlights

• Founded Ekohe in China in 2007 and has led it as chief executive ever since.
• Built the studio into a four-office practice across Tokyo, Paris, Vancouver and New York.
• Repositioned the firm around AI-native product development, including an AI agents practice and self-assessment tooling for prospective clients.
• Established a HIPAA-compliant software development offering serving US healthcare clients from New York.
• Took a master’s in artificial intelligence and pattern recognition at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, in addition to an engineering master’s from Centrale Lille Institute.
• Previously R&D manager at Labbrand in Shanghai.
• Guest on Dale Carnegie Tokyo’s leadership podcast, discussing entrepreneurship.

Professional Journey

Guilbot trained as an engineer at Centrale Lille Institute in France and then moved to China, where he took a second master’s degree at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in artificial intelligence and pattern recognition. That is a notable detail of timing: he was studying machine learning in the mid-2000s, well before it became commercially central, and it explains why the firm he later built was able to move into AI work as a natural extension rather than a rebrand.

His first role after that was as R&D manager at Labbrand, a Shanghai-based brand consultancy. Working at the intersection of brand strategy and technical research in China gave him both the market knowledge and the client relationships to start on his own.

Ekohe was founded in China in 2007 as a digital product design and engineering studio. The business model — a design and engineering practice serving clients across markets — depends on being physically present where the clients are, and Ekohe expanded accordingly rather than staying a single-city shop. It now operates from Tokyo, Paris, Vancouver and New York, a spread that covers Japanese, European and North American clients from local bases while sharing engineering capability across them.

The firm’s more recent positioning is built around AI. Its public material leads with AI solutions and AI agents, including diagnostic quizzes aimed at helping prospective clients assess where automation would actually help, which functions as both a marketing device and a consulting qualification step. Alongside that runs a distinctly different line of work: HIPAA-compliant software development for healthcare clients in New York. That specialisation is a deliberate constraint — compliant health software is a smaller market than general product engineering, but a considerably more defensible one, since the barrier is regulatory knowledge that a generalist studio cannot assemble quickly.

Education

Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Master’s degree, Artificial Intelligence and Pattern Recognition

Centrale Lille Institute

Master’s degree, Engineering