Edidiong Ekong is Founder and CEO of Talksign, a Nigeria and UK-based AI startup building real-time sign language translation tools to bridge the communication gap between deaf and hearing individuals. A serial entrepreneur, growth leader, and author, he brings over 10 years of experience scaling venture-backed technology companies across global markets.

Edidiong studied at the University of Dundee and built a distinguished career contributing to more than $5 billion in cumulative revenue across e-commerce, payments, and digital entertainment at companies including Fireflies.ai, Boomplay, Klasha, Alerzo, and Maplerad. His passion for sign language began in childhood, learning to sign at age 9 while growing up alongside deaf friends in Nigeria.

Edidiong serves as a strategic advisor to founders of Y Combinator and Techstars-backed startups, and is an author and speaker on growth strategy and accessibility-driven innovation. His personal connection to the deaf community fuels his conviction that accessibility is a human right, not a feature.

Under his leadership, Talksign launched Talksign-1, a bidirectional ASL translation model achieving 84.7% accuracy and under 100ms latency, and subsequently released Palm 1.0 and Echo 1.0 with photorealistic signing avatars. Talksign also launched an AI data marketplace enabling deaf communities to contribute, annotate, and license sign language datasets ethically.

Talksign was named to the 2026 Slator Language AI 50 Under 50, recognizing it as one of the most innovative language AI companies globally. The company is building for over 70 million sign language users worldwide, with a specific focus on offline-first accessibility for underserved markets across Africa.