Maskey shifts Fusemachines to AI education in Nepal, scaling to 250 staff, $500M funding

Sameer Maskey founded Fusemachines after building the first Nepali speech synthesizer in 2000 and working at IBM Watson and Columbia. Initially focused on AI-powered customer service products for clients like the New York City government, he shifted the company’s strategy toward teaching AI in developing countries after recognizing a severe shortage of AI engineers in the US and seeing an opportunity to train local talent in Nepal.

Through Fusemachines fellowships and the Fuse Classrooms platform, the company grew to about 250 employees and over 120 machine‑learning engineers, many hired from fellowship graduates. Its AI talent solutions have supported US clients such as Enhatch and Barkbox, whose subsequent fundraising exceeded $500 million, while the initiative has expanded AI education to underserved communities and aims to democratize access to high‑quality AI training worldwide.

Grew to 250 employees, trained over 120 ML engineers via fellowships, and helped clients such as Enhatch and Barkbox raise more than $500 million in funding.

To address the US AI engineer shortage by tapping into underutilized technical talent in countries like Nepal.

To provide affordable, context‑relevant AI education that enables local innovators to build solutions for their own communities.

To create a sustainable talent pipeline for Fusemachines’ clients while fulfilling a social mission of democratizing AI.

Investing in local talent pipelines and education can alleviate skill shortages, create social impact, and drive business growth in emerging markets.

Since the strategic pivot, Fusemachines has expanded its fellowship programs to Rwanda, the Dominican Republic and India, continued to sell its Fuse Classrooms platform at low cost, and maintained a dual bottom line of profit and impact. The company continues to hire a majority of its ML engineers from fellowship cohorts and reports that its clients have collectively raised over half a billion dollars after working with its teams.