About
Infrastructure, not a model and not a marketplace
Citations sits at the intersection of publishing, libraries, technology and AI, building the rails that let publishers of authoritative sources keep control, gain visibility and get paid when their content is read through AI assistants, and that let libraries stay the gateway to knowledge.
Citations is not an AI model and not a content marketplace. We are infrastructure, designed to be trusted by publishers, libraries, AI platforms and regulators alike.
A team built for infrastructure
Citations is led by a team with deep, complementary experience across large-scale digital publishing, secure content distribution, enterprise technology, and global media and business strategy.
Technology & platform leadership
Karam Qubsi, Faiz Al-Shahab, and Syed Irfan lead Citations' core engineering and platform architecture. Together, they bring decades of hands-on experience building and operating production-grade digital content systems at scale.
They previously co-founded and built the largest eBook distribution platform in Southeast Asia, serving millions of users and managing extensive publisher catalogs across multiple territories. Long before AI made content provenance a global concern, they were already solving hard problems in:
- • Secure ingestion and distribution of licensed content
- • Rights-aware access control across markets
- • High-availability, high-volume platforms
- • Revenue tracking and reconciliation for publishers
More than 15 years ago, the team also designed and deployed a proprietary DRM system, giving them rare, first-hand experience in content protection, adversarial access environments, and publisher trust requirements.
This background directly informs Citations' architecture today: security, auditability, and rights enforcement are foundational—not bolted on.
The engineering team is based in Cyberjaya, Malaysia, a proven technology hub that allows Citations to scale world-class infrastructure efficiently while maintaining architectural rigor and enterprise-grade standards.
Business & strategy leadership
Citations' commercial and strategic leadership is anchored by Jim Bryant, CEO, Floyd Widener, President, Alain Scemama, Chief Legal & Compliance Officer, and François-Xavier Bioul, Chief Commercial Officer.
Based in Paris, our commercial and legal leadership works at the intersection of Europe's publishing ecosystem and the rapidly evolving regulatory framework for generative AI. As Europe advances requirements for AI transparency, copyright compliance, provenance, and trusted access to authoritative content, Citations is developing infrastructure designed to help publishers and AI providers operate within this emerging environment.
With extensive leadership backgrounds in publishing, fintech and travel technology, the team brings a rare combination of operational scale, regulatory sophistication, and global commercial expertise—positioning Citations to build trusted infrastructure at the intersection of content, technology, and enterprise adoption.
Restore visibility, restore control, and restore revenue to the creators and publishers who built the knowledge ecosystem AI depends on—while enabling AI platforms to access authoritative content safely and compliantly.
Company
Citations LLC. Commercial and legal leadership in Paris; engineering in Cyberjaya, Malaysia.