Nigerian AI startups are accelerating, scaling, and boldly claiming space in global innovation circles. From finance and healthcare to language preservation and logistics, a new generation of startups is proving that Africa can compete in the global AI industry.
These startups are building infrastructure, enabling access, and creating locally grounded, globally relevant solutions. Whether it’s AI models trained on indigenous languages, or intelligent platforms managing remote teams, these Nigerian AI startups are shaping the future and competing for a spot in the global AI industry .
Here, Techparley spotlight 10 Nigerian AI professionals breaking boundaries, leading the drive of artificial intelligence startups, and redefining what’s possible for the continent and beyond.
Silas Adekunle – Co-founder & CEO, Awarri
Silas Adekunle has long been at the cutting edge of artificial intelligence. As founder and CEO of Awarri, he is building an AI and robotics ecosystem designed to address the continent’s unique challenges.
Awarri is spearheading the development of Nigeria’s first government-backed multilingual large language model (LLM) in partnership with NITDA, the National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (NCAIR), and data.org.
With a Lagos annotation lab and hundreds of data-collection fellows contributing voice and text data, it is building foundational infrastructure for African-language AI. As Awarri expands its audio-text datasets, it is also creating skilled jobs and economic opportunities in the AI sector.
Dr. Success Ojo – Co-founder & CEO, GMind AI
Few Nigerians have shaped the conversation around responsible, accessible artificial intelligence quite like Dr. Success Ojo. As Co-founder and CEO of GMind AI, she is building intelligent teaching assistants that support real-time tutoring, adaptive learning, and personalised content delivery, tools specifically designed for underserved, multilingual communities.
GMind AI is active in 15+ countries. Designed for Africa’s realities, it’s a mobile-first platform tailored to multilingual classrooms and local curricula. The platform features an integrated AI Teaching Assistant with 50+ tools, including voice tutoring, lesson planning, virtual classrooms, quizzes, content summarization, and prompt-assisted creativity.
GMind AI earned the Excellence in AI/ML Award at Art of Technology Lagos 6.0 and is a member of NVIDIA’s Inception Program, giving it global tech recognition and cutting-edge infrastructure. It stands tall among Nigerian AI startups with a purpose-built, scalable, context-aware solution that competes internationally.
Yinka Adewale – Co-founder & CEO of Nomba AI
Yinka Adewale is the co-founder & CEO of Nomba. Evolving from Kudi.ai, Nomba has transformed into a leading pan-African payments and POS platform seamlessly powered by conversational AI.
Backed by substantial pre-Series B funding and a valuation of $150 million, Nomba now integrates with major global payment networks while enabling thousands of businesses across Africa to digitise their operations.
Its intelligent platform streamlines in-person and digital transactions, blending automation with accessibility. As it scales, Nomba is expanding beyond payments—broadening its offerings to serve the wider needs of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) across the continent.
Henry Mascot – Co-founder & CEO, Curacel
Henry Mascot is the driving force behind Curacel, an AI-powered insurance infrastructure company streamlining claims automation and fraud detection across Africa.
Curacel is redefining the African insurance landscape through AI-powered claims automation and fraud detection. Operating in eight countries, the platform helps major insurers boost operational efficiency by increasing claims throughput and minimising fraudulent losses.
Backed by leading global investors, Curacel’s technology is accelerating the modernisation of insurance infrastructure across the continent. The company is now expanding its AI capabilities into North African markets, aiming to create a truly pan-African insurtech backbone.
Adebayo (Sam) Alonge – Founder & Group CEO, RxAll
As Founder and Group CEO of RxAll, Adebayo is globally recognised as a pioneer in using artificial intelligence and spectroscopy to authenticate drugs in real time.
RxAll is tackling the critical issue of counterfeit medicine with its flagship innovation, RxScanner, an AI-driven molecular analysis tool that verifies the authenticity of drugs in real time.
Deployed across several African countries and supported by multi-million-dollar funding, RxAll enhances pharmaceutical safety by enabling precise, data-driven detection of substandard medications. The company is now deepening its collaborations with regulators and manufacturers, paving the way for wide-scale deployment and tighter pharmaceutical supply chain integrity.
Temi Babalola – Founder, Spitch
Temi Babalola is a Nigerian startup founder who aspires to keep African languages alive through his AI model Spitch. The platform allows users to perform transcription, machine translation and speech generation in Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa.
Spitch is advancing speech AI for African languages, offering accurate transcription, translation, and text-to-speech services designed with local context in mind. Its models are earning recognition for their linguistic precision and cultural nuance, addressing the gap left by Western-centric AI systems.
As it scales, Spitch is expanding into conversational AI, with applications in customer service automation, local broadcasting, and voice-driven interfaces for everyday use.
Adeola Ayoola – CEO and Co-founder, Famasi Africa
Adeola Ayoola is the CEO/Co-founder at Famasi. Her work is rooted in a decade of experience across pharmacy operations — retail, public hospitals, wholesale, and HealthTec.
Famasi Africa is reimagining how medications are prescribed, stocked, and delivered through AI. Its intelligent platform combines prescription management, inventory tracking, and on-demand delivery, with a growing footprint across multiple Nigerian states.
A graduate of the Google for Startups AI-First Accelerator, Famasi uses predictive analytics to optimise pharmaceutical supply chains, ensuring critical medications reach underserved communities faster. With a bold goal of hitting one million prescription refills by 2027, the startup is scaling a tech-powered pharmacy infrastructure built for reliability, care, and access.
Adebayo Ajibade – Founder, Loubby AI
Founded by Adebayo Ajibade, Lobby EI is a HR AI platform that helps global companies connect with Nigerian talent in a very seamless way. It also has an end to end platform you can use to hire on board, manage, and pay students or or talent for Nigeria.
Loubby AI is building the AI operating system for remote African teams, a streamlined solution for sourcing talent, managing hiring pipelines, processing payments, and orchestrating day-to-day workflows. Tailored specifically for Africa’s tech professionals, Loubby’s platform is designed to remove friction from cross-border remote work.
After its recent debut at a major innovation showcase, the company is now formalising enterprise partnerships to embed its solution within larger HR and operations ecosystems, positioning itself as a backbone for the future of remote work in Africa.
Cossi Achille Arouko – Founder, Bujeti (Bujetti)
Founded by Cossi Achille Arouko, Bujeti is a corporate cards and expense management platform for African businesses. Arouko has long been a computer scientist spearheading the development of artificial intelligence across Africa.
Backed by Y Combinator, Bujeti is a rising fintech automating corporate expense management through AI-powered approval workflows, smart analytics, and seamless corporate card provisioning. With its recent seed funding, Bujeti is empowering small and medium enterprises to digitise spend tracking, eliminate manual bottlenecks, and gain real-time financial visibility.
The platform is currently expanding into high-growth sectors such as logistics and agriculture, offering scalable financial operations tools tailored for African business realities.
Yinka Iyinolakan – Founder & CEO, CDIAL.AI
Yinka Iyinolakan is the founder and CEO of CDIAL.AI. Founded in 2021, CDIAL is building critical AI infrastructure for indigenous Nigerian languages, developing tools like conversational AIs, translation APIs, diacritization engines, and multilingual smart keyboards.
With recognition from global accelerators and multiple innovation awards, CDIAL is making language technologies accessible to low-resource communities, closing the digital divide and enabling more inclusive digital participation. Its work is shaping how underserved populations engage with digital systems—proving that language equity is fundamental to Africa’s AI future.
Beyond CDIAL.AI, Iyinolakan is also the co-founder of Stakestack, an AI-powered adaptive learning management system that personalises educational content for users based on their behaviour, pace, and learning style.
