Our Story / Our Founder

Aeeiee was founded on November 19th, 2015 by David I. Ovienmhada as a Delaware S-Corporation, but the story goes back much farther.

The first time David ever wrote a line of code was at 18 years old at Arizona State University. He always had a passion for computers and was fortunate enough to be the child of hard working Nigerian-immigrant parents who were able to buy him a computer at the age of 6. In 1992, David was using (and constantly breaking) a hobbled together desktop computer built by a man nicknamed “Uncle Sunny”, who was the Phoenix Nigerian community’s go-to guy for computers.

David would mess around on the DOS operating system, and Windows 3.1, opening every system resource, playing bootleg games (thanks Uncle), messing with firmware settings, and constantly taking the computer apart. After breaking the computer, he would follow up with phone calls to Uncle Sunny about what went wrong and when next Sunny could come over and help him fix things. David would constantly mix up the terms “Hard Disk” and “Floppy Disk” (because Floppy Disks were hard).

David performed well in school, but always hated homework. In fact, his teachers would constantly report that David would refuse to do homework, or do the homework and refuse to hand it in (seriously, ask his parents). But he had a love for learning what he wanted to learn.

After graduating high school, David immediately started a company called Ovi Corporation, which sold custom computers (they only sold five). He also chose to study Computer Systems Engineering at ASU, simply because he recognized at the time that everything that was currently being done in the world, could be done better on and by computers, and as such everything would eventually migrate to computer systems. Little did he know that “Computer Systems Engineering” would mean the construction of computer hardware and circuits, which wasn’t very interesting to him. So in college he changed his major to “Computer Science” which was the theory behind computing and the writing of software programs.

Because Ovi Corporation needed a website, but in 2005, websites were ridiculously expensive for a broke college kid to afford, he had to learn to build his own. And he loved it! Soon www.ovicorp.com was born. From then on, David would go on to build dozens of websites, apps, and work on graphic design projects. These led to part-time jobs, and eventually a lucrative contract as a Full Stack Developer in February 2007. This would be the end of David’s career at ASU as a full-time student.

By 2009, David had come up with the name “Aeeiee” after buying “AfricanIntel.com” which was short for “African Intelligence.” David wanted to buy AI.com, but knew that would be impossible, so instead decided to call the company “Aeeiee” as a word-play on “Artificial Intelligence” and “African Intelligence”. Aeeiee was meant to be a news site that would compete with Twitter, but that never happened. Instead, as David learned more about Artificial Intelligence, and improved his coding skills, and read books like “Superintelligence” by Nick Bostrom and “Incognito” by David Eagleman, he realized that Aeeiee could be so much more.

So Aeeiee was born, first as a Software Development company, then a Hosting & Cloud Solutions company, and finally as an Artificial Intelligence company.

Aeeiee has been running profitably for its entire existence – almost 4 years – with no venture capital funding. Aeeiee has already built a suite of iOS apps, web apps, and cloud solutions with a 5 year development roadmap currently in progress. The latest thing being worked on at Aeeiee is body scanning using Machine Learning for our Dress Measurement app.

David is now married and a father of 4, has had the opportunity to build a team from friends both old and new, including Matthew Magruder, who was part of Ovi Corporation back in 2005. Aeeiee’s team is comprised of engineers, data scientists, analysts, marketers, and business developers with a drive to build a 21st century Pan-African company.

David calls himself the “Black Sheep of the Nigerian Community” because of his stubborn nature and the fact that he is only 7 classes from completing his Computer Science Degree, but refuses to because he “hates homework.” Nigerian-Americans are the single highest educated ethnic group in the United States, with most pursuing degrees in Medicine, Law, or Engineering. His Nigerian-immigrant parents constantly nag him about the degree, but they are happy with the stock package and residual income Aeeiee has been giving them. David’s mom still sometimes tells him he should have become a Medical Doctor, like her.

Aeeiee’s main office is currently in Tempe, Arizona. We will soon be relocating to Atlanta, Georgia and opening a satellite office in Lagos, Nigeria.