How Michael Sonderby is Steering Innovation at SteerAI

In 2022, while working as a consultant, Michael Sonderby helped define the strategic go-to-market opportunities for the autonomous mobility technologies Technology Innovation Institute (TII) was developing.

Michael returned two years later, just after SteerAI, the venture built on that research, launched—this time as Acting CEO.

Since then, SteerAI has added several new team members, is accelerating the validation of its technology in unmapped, off-road environments, to help lay the foundations for scaling the company. For Sonderby, the rollout has been about focus and translating years of technology and GtM insights into decisions on how best to scale products, partnerships, and deployments.

Michael is of Danish and Polish heritage and spent most of his childhood travelling, including spending a large part of his childhood in Saudi Arabia. After boarding school in Denmark Michael served as a first lieutenant at the Royal Danish Military Academy training as a Forward Observation Officer. This later led to two deployments as a Captain to Afghanistan and Kosovo after his MSc at LSE. He built a career spanning strategy, technology, and venture building, including more than a decade at Boston Consulting Group, where he led the set up the BCG Digital Ventures in Shenzhen and later Dubai. He now lives in Dubai with his German wife and their two sons, who are growing up, like he did, in the region with all the benefits of being exposed to new cultures.

This global fluidity has shaped how he works.

“I’ve always been comfortable operating across different boundaries,” he says, whether those boundaries are geographical, cultural or technological. It is also why the UAE and Abu Dhabi resonates so strongly with him. Beyond the incredible quality of life we enjoy, he sees an ecosystem with a rare combination of great ambitions, a collaborative mindset and a laser focus on delivering on the ambitions that are being set out. In many ways the perfect context for seeding and scaling new technologies that can not only drive impact in the UAE, but globally.

SteerAI sits at the center of that model. Launched by VentureOne, the venture builder within Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council, it offers autonomous driving and fleet management solutions designed for companies operating in complex, off-road environments.

“SteerAI is a prime example of how we can bring together autonomous driving and fleet intelligence into one system that can coordinate, monitor, and adapt operations in real time,” says Sonderby.

As Acting CEO, his focus is now on scaling what works: expanding the product offering, building partnerships, and proving value with customers, starting in the UAE. Recent deployments, such as xRift, a mission-ready, multi-purpose autonomous vehicle, are turning ambition into credibility, signaling a shift from experimentation to execution and customer adoption.

“With steady progress and the right partnerships, autonomous mobility will revolutionize how complex operations and missions are carried out,” he said. “What matters now is building systems that perform reliably, at scale, and in the environments where it really counts. At SteerAI, we have the tools, the talent, and the drive to lead that change.”