Silas Adekunle

Silas Adekunle grew up in a comfortable family in Nigeria but had little exposure to technology until his family moved to the United Kingdom when he was around ten years old. As a teenager he began experimenting with amateur robotics, building crude prototypes from whatever he could find — including, by his own account, a robotic hand made from baked bean cans and a robotic face modelled on MIT's Kismet robot, with tennis balls for eyes and rolled paper for ears.

He went on to earn a first-class degree in robotics from the University of the West of England in Bristol, and in 2013 met Christopher Beck, with whom he co-founded Reach Robotics. After six years of development, the company unveiled MekaMon in 2017 — a four-legged robot combining lifelike, expressive movement with augmented reality gaming, controlled via a smartphone app. It was recognised as the world's first intelligent gaming robot.

MekaMon's initial launch sold roughly 500 units and generated around $7.5 million, and the product caught the attention of Apple's Head of Developer Relations, Ron Okamoto, after a chance meeting; Reach Robotics went on to secure an exclusive distribution deal with Apple Retail across the US and UK, with the company reportedly raising over $10 million in venture funding. Reach Robotics closed in 2019 amid difficult market conditions, though the MekaMon brand and technology were later revived under new ownership.

Adekunle has since turned his focus to broader applications of robotics and AI, founding Awarri, a company focused on developing and adapting advanced AI and robotics technology for the African market, and co-founding a cloud infrastructure company supporting remote robotics and industrial automation. In 2018 he was named to the Financial Times' list of the Top 100 minority ethnic leaders in technology.