About

Senior by default.

A5 Tech OÜ is an applied AI studio registered in Estonia. It exists because there is a gap in the market between two bad options: a large consultancy that sells you a team of juniors under a senior nameplate, and a freelancer who disappears when the hard part starts.

We solve that with senior technical ownership on every engagement, a team sized to the project rather than to a bench, and honesty about scope. Fixed quotes against a written definition of done, and a week-one spike that kills bad ideas before they become bad projects.

Every engagement has senior technical ownership. Some projects are delivered directly, some with trusted partners, and some alongside your team — the model depends on the scope, not on a fixed agency shape.

The research base is public: doctoral work on facial-expression agents, published affective-computing papers, open-source tools and press coverage that can be inspected before anyone asks for trust.

Skills

The capability map

S.01Applied AI systemsProblem framing, model selection, evaluation design, deployment planning and handover documentation.End to end

S.02Computer visionObject detection, image classification, measurement from photographs, field-image constraints and multimodal photo analysis.Vision

S.03Language agentsDocument QA, risk extraction, claim verification, retrieval, tool use, prompt/version control and cost-aware LLM features.Agents

S.04Audio and signal MLSmall-sample classification, augmentation, subject-aware validation, calibration and research-only model reporting.Signals

S.05Research engineeringReproducible notebooks, dataset methodology, experimental tooling, text mining and publishable analysis pipelines.Research

S.06Interfaces, bots and automationStatic sites, API-backed tools, Discord automation, interaction design, HCI-informed UX review and browser games.Product

Founder

Abdallah H Sham

Founder of A5 Tech OÜ. Background in applied machine learning across three uncomfortable domains: affective computing (measuring human emotional response from video), computer vision in the field (measuring physical objects from imperfect photographs), and applied NLP (turning large free-text corpora into findings that survive scrutiny).

Published research tooling used by other labs. Writes open-source software, including a cognitive-psychology skill for interface design that is used on this site.

github.com/ahsham ResearchGate

B.01Affective computingWebcam-based emotional response collection, dataset methodology, reproducible research tooling.DRED

B.02Computer visionDetection and dimensional measurement from field imagery under occlusion and inconsistent scale.Timber

B.03Applied NLPText mining and topic modeling over large free-text corpora, reported as findings that hold up to review.OER

B.04LLM engineeringRetrieval, tool use, evaluation harnesses and token budgets for language-model features in production.Private work

Public research

Evidence you can check

R.01Doctoral thesisTallinn University covered the Enactive Facial Expression Pipeline, a webcam-based modular system for dyadic interaction between people and human-like agents.TLU

R.02Research coverageResearch in Estonia highlighted the same work: facial-expression agents, 60 participants, five social scenarios and a low-risk EU AI Act framing.Research in Estonia

R.03Public argumentERR published Abdallah's opinion piece on AI companions, emotional attachment, the ELIZA effect and why responsive agents need ethical limits.ERR

R.04Publication trailResearchGate lists work across facial-expression synthesis, reaction emotion estimation, speech emotion recognition and fairness in affective AI.ResearchGate

Principles

What we will and won't do

P.01Measure or do not shipEvery model we deliver comes with an evaluation harness. If we cannot measure whether it works, we will not tell you that it does.Non-negotiable

P.02Cheapest method that worksA regular expression that solves the problem beats a language model that mostly does. We route to the model only where it earns its cost.By design

P.03No lock-inYou get the code, the data, the pipeline and the documentation. You should be able to fire us and keep running.Contractual

P.04We will say noIf your data cannot support the outcome you want, you hear it in week one, in writing. That is worth more than a signed contract.Week one

P.05Not a medical deviceHealth-adjacent research work stays research. We do not market unvalidated models as diagnostic tools, ever.Regulatory

Company

The legal bit

C.01Legal entityA5 Tech OÜ, a private limited company registered in the Republic of Estonia.Reg. 16817460

C.02JurisdictionEstonian law. EU-based, which means GDPR is the default posture rather than an afterthought.EU · Estonia

C.03InvoicingEUR, SEPA transfer, 14-day terms. A5 Tech OÜ is not currently VAT registered.EUR · SEPA

C.04TermsAll engagements are governed by our published terms of service.Read them

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