Building AI research organizations that ship frontier technology.
MIT PhD. DARPA Principal Investigator. Co-Founder of Khaya AI, co-founder of GhanaNLP, and author of “Transfer Learning for Natural Language Processing” (Manning).
LLMs ◆SPEECH AI ◆VOICE AGENTS ◆FOUNDATION MODELS ◆AGENTIC AI ◆MACHINE TRANSLATION ◆LLMs ◆SPEECH AI ◆VOICE AGENTS ◆FOUNDATION MODELS ◆AGENTIC AI ◆MACHINE TRANSLATION ◆
By the numbers
Scale, shipped.
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Speakers covered by Khaya AI language technology
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Languages with production ASR
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Languages & dialects with TTS
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Open speech foundation models (DONDO)
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Google Play downloads
Selected work
What I build.
Open foundation models, real-time voice agents, production APIs, and the research teams that make them happen.
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Open foundation models
DONDO
26 open w2v-BERT speech-recognition base models spanning 27 language varieties across 6 countries — released Apache-2.0 on Hugging Face so anyone can build on them.
Real-time conversational voice agents in African languages, plus an Anthropic Claude integration that exposes translation, ASR and TTS as agent skills.
The first AI translation app for Ghanaian languages — 100K+ Google Play downloads — with models that benchmark above Google Translate on covered languages (for example, Yoruba).
DARPA Principal Investigator on the D3M and ASED programs. Built New Knowledge’s research division as its first employee. Director of Data Science at Dun & Bradstreet.
DARPA D3MDARPA ASEDNew KnowledgeDun & Bradstreet
Trajectory
The path.
2025 — present
Co-Founder
Khaya AI
World Summit Award 2025
2019 — present
Co-Founder & Director of Research
GhanaNLP
2019 — present
Director of Data Science
Dun & Bradstreet
2017 — 2019
Director of AI Research
New Knowledge
2015 — present
CTO
Algorine Research — MIT spinout; earlier, Oracle
2007 — 2014
PhD & SM, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
MIT — Deshpande Fellow. Before: Swarthmore College; Opoku Ware School
NSMQ 2002 champion
The book
Wrote it before it was obvious.
“Transfer Learning for Natural Language Processing” (Manning) is one of the first books on the transfer-learning paradigm that powers today’s large language models — written for engineers who want to actually use it.
Dr. PushkinGhanaian-American · Hip-Hop & Afrofusion · Austin, TX
Artist-engineer bridging Ghana’s north and America’s south — who doesn’t just carry culture across borders, but builds the bridges it travels on.
He broke an eight-year record, then joined the Recording Academy. Voting Member of the 2026 class — with five songs currently under GRAMMY consideration.
Recording Academy · Voting Member 2026
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Views on “Empty Grave”
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Channel views on YouTube
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International awards, 2025–26
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Songs under GRAMMY consideration
The record
“Empty Grave” (feat. B-Wayne) is the most-streamed music video in Northern Ghanaian music history — 2.5M+ views, breaking a record held for eight years by Sarkodie & Fancy Gadam. First Northern Ghanaian rapper past 1M views on a single video.
The stage
A decade in Austin: official SXSW showcases in 2023 and 2025 (International Hip Hop Stage, alongside M.I. Abaga), headlined Zepfest 2025 in Salt Lake City with three annual awards, plus Academy LA in Hollywood and the GRAMMY Museum’s “Hip Hop America” at the LBJ Presidential Library.
The bridge
Creator of the North2South Experience, a self-produced concert series linking Ghana and Austin. The album duology No Heroes / No Miracles features Jon Connor, Strongman, Stevo Atambire, King Ayisoba and more.
