26-year-old Nigerian, Silas Adekunle becomes the highest paid robotics engineer in the world

Silas Adekunle, a 26-year-old Nigerian, credited for building the world’s first gaming robot, has just become the highest paid in the field of Robotic engineering. He achieved this feat after signing a new deal with the world’s reputable software manufacturers, Apple Inc.

The robotics engineer was also named as “Someone to Watch in 2018” by the Black Hedge Fund Group. Adekunle is currently the founder and CEO of Reach Robotics, a company developing the world’s first gaming robots.

He also recently graduated with a 1st class degree and has four years’ background in robotics. Born in Lagos, Nigeria, Adekunle studied in Nigeria before relocating to the UK as a teenager. After completing his secondary school education, he proceeded to the University of the West of England where he graduated with a first class graduate in Robotics. In 2013, he founded Reach Robotics and developed a lot of experience on robotics within a space of four years. 

Adekunle was also a team leader of Robotics In Schools programme, a programme which encourages and pays attention to students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). The programme encouraged him to develop robotics to make education more entertaining for STEM students. In 2017, MekaMon, he released the world’s first gaming robot, with the special ability to customise the gaming bot to perform personalised functions.

The initial launch of Mekamon sold 500 bots, generating $7.5 million, according to The Guardian. Following this feat, Adekunle received support from various organisations including London Venture Partners ($10 million) and in the same year, his company, Reach Robotics signed a deal with Apple securing exclusive sales in Apple stores. “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.

The young entrepreneur who once indicated that the secrets to his success are “balance, shared ideas, time management and being oneself”, was recently listed in the 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe: Technology. Adekunle, who has taken over the world with his inventiveness, is currently located at the Bristol Robotics Lab which is said to be the best robotics research centre in the UK.