Meet the Nigerian teenager who built a homegrown rival to ChatGPT

With a modest initial budget of N2.7 million, Nwaozor took on an ambition that faces off against a multi-billion dollar giant.

When he first announced his intention to build his own AI model on Facebook, he was met with discouragement, laughter, and outright disbelief from people who told him it couldn’t be done.

Undeterred, he kept working and, remarkably, built a working product named OkeyAI.

The inspiration for this audacious project didn’t come from the 2022 ChatGPT boom, but from a much earlier fascination with Google, specifically wondering how the search engine instantly returns so many relevant results.

This simple curiosity led him down a deep rabbit hole, culminating in a clear ambition by 2022 to start gathering data and train the first version of his model.

Nwaozor, who registered his company as OkeyMeta, a blend of his name and Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, signifying a drive to transcend and ‘go beyond the current state’, started pursuing this path relentlessly at the age of 14.

Despite the constant skepticism that he had merely created a ‘ChatGPT wrapper’, he assembled a small team of undergraduates to help shape the model.

The results suggest his ambition is working as OkeyAI has drawn close to 1,000 users.

The OkeyMeta API platform has attracted approximately 8,000 developers, with nearly half actively building on it.

Nwaozor argues that OkeyMeta already offers features that distinguish it from mainstream competitors. For instance, he claims OkeyMeta does not impose the same memory limits seen on other chatbots.

He stated that, “ChatGPT and other AI chatbots cap memory at 1,000 tokens; ours is unlimited”. The model is also designed with agent-like capabilities, allowing it to take action only when specific conditions are met.

Despite the technical achievements, OkeyMeta faces a major hurdle which is visibility and funding. Nwaozor noted the painfully low visibility, with posts sometimes receiving ‘one or two likes’.

This is why he currently prioritises growing the user base over making money, offering free access to developers to drive adoption.

However, every new user strains the tight budget. OkeyMeta currently relies on rented GPUs from Google, costing about $100 a month, and the computer bills rise with every additional user.

Nwaozor remains confident, however, picturing OkeyMeta evolving into a global AI player and validating the vision he set out to build.