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By Chinedu James
Nigeria’s Silas Adekunle has become the highest paid robotics engineer in the world. The 26-year-old creator of the world’s first gaming robot hit the milestone after putting pen to paper with software manufacturers, Apple Inc.
Adekunle is also the founder and CEO of Reach Robotics, a company producing the first gaming robots in the world.
The young Nigerian who relocated to the UK after his secondary school education in Nigeria went on to study Robotics in the University of West of England where he graduated with a first class.
In 2017, Adekunle invented the world’s first gaming robot, Mekamon, the four-legged robots possessing Augmented Reality (AR) capabilities that can be controlled by your smartphone. The robots are compatible with both iOS and Android devices, relying on the phones’ cameras and infrared sensors.
After countless rejections when he sort for funds, Mekamon was able to make its initial launch and sold about 500 bots, generating $7.5 million. This ushered in a new era for Reach Robotics as support and encomiums poured in from every part of the world.
The venture capital firm, London Ventures Partners invested about $10 million in Reach Robotics owing to its success and unique abilities. This was followed by a deal with Apple securing exclusive sales in Apple stores all over the world.
“Impressed by the quality of his robots and their ability to show emotion with subtly-calibrated movements, Apple priced his four-legged “battle-bots” at $300 and has put them in nearly all of its stores in the United States and Britain.
“Early customers skew towards male techies but a growing number of parents are buying the robots for their children to get them interested in STEM,” Adekunle told Forbes in an interview this year.
Adekunle was named as ‘Someone to Watch’ in 2018 by the Black Hedge Fund Group and was also recently listed in Forbes’ 2018 list of 30 Under 30 in European Technology.
Adekunle’s feat is one among many of Nigeria’s recent strides in the area of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) with startups and solutions birthed. Although Adekunle’s recent success emanated from the field of robotics, an area lacking proficiency in Nigeria, the government will look to shine more light in that area with her pursuit of a technology-driven economy following his success.
