From Nairobi to Silicon Valley: Kenyan innovator building the future of AI
Enterprise
By
Kelley Boss
| Oct 23, 2025
At a time when global anxieties over artificial intelligence (AI) often centre on opaque 'black boxes', a 26-year-old Kenyan innovator is proposing a radical solution: AI that remembers.
Benjamin Owino, a recent Cornell University graduate, has stepped away from lucrative Wall Street and Silicon Valley job offers to pursue an idea he believes will change AI’s role in society.
His bold project is a new AI framework built on memory and context, designed to be transparent, resilient, and accountable.
Raised in Nairobi, Owino excelled in local schools before securing a full scholarship to Cornell University, one of the United States’ elite Ivy League institutions. Graduating in 2024, he faced the classic graduate crossroads.
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Instead of taking the easy path to corporate stability, he chose the steep climb of entrepreneurship to develop the concept he had been sketching for years—an algorithmic system that, unlike most current AI, does not forget its past.
Today's dominant AI models prioritise speed and optimisation. They process massive datasets to reach a decision, then, in effect, flatten history, discarding the context used to arrive at the result.
This approach has led to the 'black box' problem—AI systems that deliver results with accuracy but often cannot explain the "how" or the "why". This lack of transparency erodes trust in critical sectors, such as healthcare and finance.
Owino's framework flips this script. "Most AI systems discard context once a decision is made. Forgetting is what causes breakdowns," Owino argues.
His design preserves and builds upon history, ensuring that every new decision is shaped by both the past and the present. The result is a system that he insists is more aligned with how human judgment and societal institutions evolve.
To prove the viability of his concept, Owino is tackling one of the most volatile and complex systems on the planet: the financial markets. He says financial modeling is an arena where historical context is important, and a momentary lapse of memory can lead to systemic failure.
The implications of an accountable, memory-driven AI extend far beyond finance. By embedding historical context into every step, Owino says the system promises accountability alongside prediction.
Potential applications for this transparent framework include:
Education: AI tutors that genuinely remember a student's long-term progress, building on past lessons rather than starting fresh with each session.
Healthcare: Algorithms that retain and utilise a patient's entire history for more personalized, safer diagnoses and treatment plans.
Scientific Research: Models that efficiently build upon prior experimental results, accelerating discovery instead of repetitively discarding old data.
For Owino, this project is a mix of his personal journey and a broader vision for the future of young innovators worldwide, especially those in Africa.
"Young people are restless. We don't want to inherit broken systems that forget our roots. We want tools that grow with us, not against us," he said.
His commitment to proving that paradigm-shifting innovation can emerge from African imagination received an early boost in May 2025. His ideas were presented at the Global AI Initiative’s Thought Summit.
While acknowledging the "steep road ahead" in securing funding and convincing the established AI community to "rethink assumptions," Owino remains undaunted.
"This is just my first step," he concludes. "I believe it can spark a movement, a way of building technology that is transparent, responsible, and alive with memory."