Igor Jablokov is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Pryon Inc., an AI startup that is innovating how businesses interface with decisions, knowledge, and workflows.
Education
Igor Jablokov graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering at Penn State University, where he was recognized as an Outstanding Engineering Alumnus in 1997. He acquired his Master’s of Business Administration from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2000.
Early career
Between 1996 and 2006, Jablokov performed various roles at IBM. Jablokov was a Research Engineer, Project Manager, Program Manager, and became a Program Director, where he led the innovative team that invented the precursor to IBM Watson AI and developed the world’s first multimodal Web browser.
Jablokov served as the Chief Executive Officer at Yap. Jablokov co-founded Yap, the world’s first high accuracy, a fully automated cloud platform for voice recognition, along with Victor Jablokov in 2006. Yap offered a fully cloud-based speech-to-text transcription platform that was used by customers such as Microsoft. Yap was a participant at the inaugural TechCrunch conference. After the company deployed its products by dozens of enterprises, Amazon acquired Yap and became its first AI related acquisition in September 2011, to help develop products such as Alexa Voice Service, Echo, and Fire TV.
In 2012, Jablokov was an Entrepreneur in Residence at Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network. At Blackstone, Jablokov’s duty was to unravel the remarkable economic potential of various regions in the United States by classifying and networking a region’s serial, successful entrepreneurs and associating them to the region’s next high growth companies.
Jablokov has been a USA Fellow at Eisenhower Fellowships in Greater Philadelphia Area since 2013. Eisenhower Fellowships recognizes, empowers, and joins innovative leaders through a lifelong engagement and transformative fellowship experience in a global network of dynamic transformation agents engaged in building a world more peaceful, prosperous, and just.
Jablokov has also been a National Security Fellow at Truman National Security Project in Washington D.C. Metro Area since 2014. Truman is a nationwide membership of various leaders inspired to attend in the aftermath of 9/11 and assigned to shaping and promoting for capable, smart national security solutions.
Pryon
Jablokov founded Pryon, an AI company focused on Augmented Intelligence for the enterprise, in August 2017. Pryon connects enterprise employees to digital transformation through an Augmented Intelligence platform, extending their ability to find, use knowledge, drive workflows, and make better decisions.
To produce an enterprise solution that facilitates and promotes a secure, natural language, and voice-based interactive agent for employees, Pryon is leveraging its experience in machine learning (ML). This agent operates across various devices, to optimize performance, increase worker productivity, enhance engagement, and become more intelligent. Pryon streamlines AI adoption to dramatically conquer deployment times, costs, and complexity.
In December 2018, Dr. David Nahamoo joined Pryon as Chief Technology Officer to accelerate delivery of company’s augmented intelligence platform. In January 2019, InfoSlip chose Pryon to bring AI to interactive documents. In April 2019, Top Product Executive Greg Pelton also joined Pryon.
Funding rounds
In August 2018, Pryon closed $4.5 million in a seed round from its lead investor Greycroft, with the participation from other investors, including Two Sigma Ventures, Triangle Angel Partners, Tech Square Ventures, Sequoia Scout, Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, Good Growth Capital, Full Tilt Capital, Engage Ventures, BootstrapLabs, and Carolina Angel Network. During this investment, the company used the funds to launch its solution.
In June 2019, Pryon raised $20 million in a Series A round, led by Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, with the participation from the previous investors, including Two Sigma Ventures, Greycroft, Good Growth Capital, Engage Ventures, and BootstrapLabs. Other new investors joined this round, including Stanford University Venture Fund, Plug and Play, Digital Alpha Advisors, and Breyer Capital. The company intends to use the funds to further build its core product, grow its roster of Fortune 500 customers, and develop strategic partnerships.
Pryon has raised a total of $24.5 million in funding and is funded by 16 investors. Pryon has $3 million in estimated revenue annually. The company competes with CognitiveScale, MondoBrain, and Element AI.
Volunteer experience
Igor Jablokov was a former Chairman at VoiceXML Forum, a former Founding Board Member at Speech Technology Consortium, and founded a chapter of the Global Shapers, a program of the World Economic Forum. Jablokov also serves as a mentor in the TechStars’ Alexa Accelerator and advisor at Dreamit Ventures.