Grace Ashiru
Pan-African IT firm Bluechip Technologies announced its acquisition of YarnGPT, a Nigerian text-to-speech AI model capable of reading text aloud in Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa and other Nigerian languages, at its Data and AI Summit in Lagos. Co-founder and CEO Kazeem Tewogbade made the announcement on stage to an enthusiastic audience. YarnGPT was built by Saheed Azeez, a University of Lagos graduate who first gained attention as runner-up at Bluechip’s own AI hackathon in 2023. Tewogbade said the company plans to continue acquiring products that fit its existing portfolio, which includes its data platform, Cribro, BluPrime, and CashComplete.
The deal is being read as more than a straightforward acquisition — it’s seen as a sign that African-built AI tools, designed around local languages and contexts, can find commercial traction without copying Western models. The summit, themed around AI-driven transformation for Africa, featured voices including XCelerate IQ’s Rosanne Werner, Kickoff Africa’s Fola Olatunji-David, and Ventures Platform’s Kola Aina, who argued that Africa’s biggest AI opportunities lie not in massive data centers but in building AI-native companies and tackling infrastructure gaps. Bluechip itself, founded 18 years ago by Tewogbade and Olumide Soyombo, now operates across nine countries serving more than 50 corporate clients, and frames this deal as a shift from offering AI-enabled services toward owning AI products outright.
