10 Nigerian Americans Crushing it in Tech

In 2017, UrbanGeekz published a viral blog post showcasing 10 Nigerian Americans Making Waves in Tech. In our 2024 iteration, we bring you fresh new talent alongside veteran techies building their brands in America and other innovation hubs across the globe.

A unifying theme is that each innovator displays grit, resilience, and determination to make an impact. These individuals exemplify diverse contributions to the tech industry, showcasing their roles as entrepreneurs, innovators, and leaders. Check out our latest listicle of 10 Nigerian Americans crushing it in the technology and innovation economy.

1. Sam Udotong – Fireflies.ai

Sam Udotong is a trailblazing technologist and entrepreneur who co-founded Fireflies.ai, a startup that transforms meetings by using AI to record, transcribe, and summarize conversations.

Under Udotong’s technical leadership, Fireflies.ai has grown significantly, securing $14 million in funding and building a global team. He is also an active thought leader, frequently guest lecturing at Stanford on artificial intelligence and sharing his insights at major tech conferences. Despite the challenges of startup life, Udotong remains committed to helping others leverage AI to improve productivity and communication.

2. Jessica O Matthews 

Founder and CEO of Unchartered Jessica O. Matthews is a Nigerian-American entrepreneur who is bringing universal access to smart and sustainable infrastructure. Her company is backed by Disney, Issa Rae, and Magic Johnson Enterprises.

At just 22, she founded Unchartered, creating a central hub that connects cities to innovative, cost-effective solutions essential to transforming their environments and using data to achieve infrastructural operation. 

In 2021, Jessica was officially appointed by Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm to the Electricity Advisory Committee. Her impressive list of accolades includes Fortune’s Most Promising Women Entrepreneurs, two features on Forbes 30 Under 30, Harvard University Scientist of the Year, and Black Women Tech Talk’s Trailblazer Award. She has appeared on the covers of Forbes and Forbes Africa and has been featured in Marie Clair, TechCrunch, The New York Times, and Fast Company. 

Nigerian Americans In Tech

3. Tope Awotona – Calendly

From a modest neighborhood in Lagos, Nigeria, to becoming one of the few Black American billionaires, Tope Awotona is the mastermind behind the Black-owned unicorn, ‘Calendly.’ 

With a career that kicked off at IBM, Perceptive Software, and EMC, Tope is well-equipped with enterprise software. However, it was not until he moved to Atlanta and plugged into Atlanta Tech Village that he created Calendly from his apartment. 

The scheduling software company now has over 20 million users worldwide, including many Fortune 500 companies. Its average annual turnover is estimated at over $100 million. In 2023, the company launched Calendly Routing, a feature that helps sales and marketing teams route and schedule meetings with prospects faster. Awotona’s success demonstrates how innovative solutions can address everyday problems.

Related Post: Black-Led Tech Firm Calendly Valued At $3 Billion After $350M Series B Raise

4. Wemimo Abbey – Esusu

Much like Awotona, Wemimo Abbey grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, and moved to the U.S. when he was just 17 years old. Years later, he co-founded Esusu, a platform that provides rent reporting, property management analytics, and rental assistance. Founded in 2018, Esusu raised $130 million in its Series B fundraising round, making it one of the very few Black-owned U.S.-based unicorn companies.

In 2020, Abbey was recognized on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list. In 2021, he was selected by Goldman Sachs as one of the 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs. He is also the founder of Clean Water for Everyone, a global venture that provides affordable access to clean water for over 250,000 people in developing countries.  

5. Kunbi Tinuoye -UrbanGeekz

Award-winning British-born journalist, social entrepreneur, and Cambridge University alumnus Kunbi Tinuoye is the founder of tech news site UrbanGeekz, a technology, business, and science site serving people of color. Tinuoye is a key player in the Atlanta startup ecosystem and is recognized by CrunchBase as one of the ‘25 Black Entrepreneurs making waves. 

The ex-BBC journalist was a former correspondent for NBC’s theGrio. She is an international writer whose work has been published in The Daily Mail, London’s Evening Standard, Ebony.com, and The Voice newspaper. Tinuoye’s latest venture is Geekz Ventures, a pre-accelerator for underrepresented entrepreneurs, now in its first cohort. 

6. Isoken Igbinedion – Parfait wigs

Featured on UrbanGeekz’s 50 ‘AI & Machine Learning category’, Isoken Igbinedion is the co-founder and CEO of Parfait, a platform that uses AI technology to design custom wigs. She began her career as an operations manager at Target and held roles at Amazon, Whole Foods, and Microsoft. 

Driven to launch Parfait after a dangerous encounter with a chemical relaxer that made her natural hair fall out, Igbinedion was disappointed with the hair extension market for women of color. 

She decided to create the change she wanted to see and founded Parfait in 2021. Parfait has raised $5 million in funding spearheaded by Upfront Ventures and Serena Ventures. Parfait intends to keep making the wig industry more inclusive to meet the needs of all its consumers. 

7. George Azih, LeaseQuery

One of the UrbanGeekz 50 for technology, George Aziz founded LeaseQuery in 2011. By 2017, the company was thriving, with over 180 employees. In 2019, it raised $40 million in Series A funding, led by Goldman Sachs’ merchant banking division. LeaseQuery uses cloud-based solutions to help accountants and financial professionals eliminate lease accounting problems. 

Following an unfulfilling accounting role at a Fortune 500 company, Azih decided to follow his obsession with account leasing and found LeaseQuery. Azih remains hyper-focused on developing the best product he can for LeaseQuery’s clients and users. 

The businesses’ annual sales now soar over $25 million. George Azih was on the University of Georgia’s 2020 Bulldog 100 list of fastest-growing alumni-owned businesses. He was recently named in Accounting Today’s Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting. LeaseQuery ranked among the fastest-growing companies in North America on the 2022 Deloitte Technology Fast 500™ for the third year in a row. 

8. Tayo Oviosu

The founder of payments provider Paga, Tayo Oviosu, has built a customer base of more than 20 million in Nigeria for his payments and financial services provider, which he founded in 2009. Cresting the wave of digital banking in Africa, Paga has partnered with Visa and Western Union to improve mobile banking access in Nigeria.

Oviosu earned his BSc at the University of Southern California and his MBA at Stanford University. He worked at Cisco Systems, expanding Cisco’s investment expansion in Africa before returning to Nigeria in 2008. He bootstrapped Paga for the first six months before receiving angel investment from Goodwell Alitheia Capital. Paga has since expanded into Ethiopia and Mexico. 

9. Maya Horgan Famodu

Maya Horgan Famodu, the founder of Ingressive, the $10 million venture capital firm, was born to a Nigerian father and an American mother. Spending most of her childhood in Minnesota, she went on to do a BA at Pomona College and then complete a Pre-law program at Cornell. 

She founded Ingressive in 2014 after several years in private equity research at JP Morgan’s Chase program. Ingressive targets early-stage startups across sub-Saharan Africa’s key tech markets. Horgan Famodu was prompted to found her own VC firm after witnessing her friends struggle to secure financial backing for their businesses. 

It had seeded some of Africa’s fastest-growing businesses, including Paystack, which was sold to Stripe for over $200 million. Horgan Famodu has also founded Ingressive for Good, a nonprofit that focuses on technical talent and resources for African startup ecosystems and has done a collective 40 deals across the continent. 

Horgan Famodu launched the first female-owned tech fund in Nigeria and was the youngest person to launch a VC in sub-Saharan Africa. She has been featured in Forbes 30 under 30 twice: in 2018 in the technology category and 2021 in the United States Venture Capital category. 

Related Post: Female Founders and Investors Tell Their Stories in a New Doc: Women Who Build Africa

10. Ikenna Nzewi

Co-founder of Releaf, which he founded in 2017, Ikenna Nzewi is the Yale computer science graduate changing agriculture technology in Africa. He founded Releaf while still at university and, in its early days, also held down a role at Bain & Company in the private equity group. 

Releaf develops hardware and software solutions to drive the industrialization of food processing in Africa and ensure that Nigerian manufacturers have access to quality raw materials. The company is backed by Y Combinator, Samurai Incubate, Future Africa, and Consonance, among others.

In early 2023, Releaf announced its $3.3 million pre-Series A round led by Samarai Incubate Africa. This funding supported the launch of new major technologies for the business. Under Nzewi, the company has secured more than $100 million in supply chain contracts from leading consumer goods manufacturers such as Presco, PZ Cussons, and others.  

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