Silas Adekunle is popularly known as the Nigerian robotics engineer who built the world’s first intelligent gaming robots. He is also an inventor and technology entrepreneur.
Born, raised and also had some of his education in Nigeria before relocating to the UK. This is was in his teens after he completed his secondary school education. He went on to earn a first-class degree in Robotics from the University of the West of England.
In 2013, he co-founded Reach Robotics, an augmented reality gaming company that creates robots for gaming and for STEM education.
He gained experience in robotics within a space of 4 years due to an admirable willingness to learn. This likely helped him become a team leader of Robotics In Schools programme. It is a programme that encourages and pays attention to students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). During his involvement in the programme, he thought of developing robotics to make education much more entertaining for STEM students.
Mekamon, the world’s first gaming robot was born in 2017. A unique feature of this robot is the ability to customise the gaming bot to perform personalised functions. Despite being doubted by potential investors whilst he was seeking funds, the initial launch of Mekamon sold 500 bots, generating $7.5 million.
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Silas Adekunle’s Success
Owing to this groundbreaking success with his gaming robots, Adekunle also received support from organisations like London Venture Partners to the tune of $10 million (N360 million). In the same year, Reach Robotics signed a deal with Apple securing exclusive sales in Apple stores.
Furthermore, his works are popular across continents. Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe: Technology listed him in 2018 .
In November 2018, Adekunle was listed amongst the UK’s top 100 black and minority ethnic leaders in technology by the Financial Times. The 2019 One Young World awards listed him in June 2019, among the world’s most revolutionary entrepreneurs for .
He stated that the secrets to his success includes balance, shared ideas, time management and being oneself.