Igor Jablokov is the founder and chairman of Pryon. Named an “Industry Luminary” by Speech Technology Magazine, he previously founded industry pioneer Yap, the world’s first high accuracy, fully automated cloud platform for voice recognition. After its products were deployed by dozens of enterprises, the company became Amazon’s first artificial intelligence–related acquisition. The firm’s inventions then served as the nucleus for follow-on products such as Alexa, Echo, and Fire TV. As a program director at IBM, Jablokov led the team that designed the precursor to Watson and developed the world’s first multimodal web browser.

Jablokov was awarded Eisenhower and Truman National Security fellowships to explore and expand the role of entrepreneurship and venture capital in addressing geopolitical concerns. As an innovator in human-language technologies, he believes in fostering career and educational opportunities for others entering STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). As such, he serves as a mentor in the Techstars’ Alexa Accelerator, was a Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network North Carolina entrepreneur-in-residence, and founded a chapter of the Global Shapers, a program of the World Economic Forum.

Jablokov holds a bachelor of science in computer engineering from The Pennsylvania State University, where he received an Outstanding Engineering Alumni Award, and an master of business administration from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.