# Sameer Maskey

> Sameer Maskey is the Kathmandu-born computer scientist, founder and CEO of New York-based Fusemachines, and an adjunct associate professor at Columbia University. His work spans Nepali speech synthesis, speech summarization, machine translation, enterprise AI and AI education. He founded Fusemachines in 2013; the company began Nasdaq trading in October 2025. Its AI Fellowship, launched in 2017, reported more than 1,200 fellows trained across 12 countries in February 2026.

- **Role:** Founder and CEO at Fusemachines
- **Organizations:** Fusemachines, Columbia University, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center
- **From:** Kathmandu, Nepal
- **Education:** B.S. with honors in Mathematics and Physics, Bates College, M.S. in Computer Science, Columbia University, M.Phil. in Computer Science, Columbia University, Ph.D. in Computer Science, Columbia University
- **Known for:** Developed an early Nepali speech synthesizer as an undergraduate; Bates described the project as the first Nepali text-to-speech program in December 2000., Authored more than 20 research papers listed on his Columbia academic page., Founded Fusemachines in 2013 and led it through its October 2025 public-market debut.

## Career timeline

- **2000** — As a Bates undergraduate, worked on Nepali text-to-speech software and phonetic rules.
- **2002** — Graduated from Bates College in mathematics and physics.
- **2008** — Completed a Columbia computer science PhD on automatic broadcast news speech summarization, advised by Julia Hirschberg.
- **2007-2012** — Worked as a research staff member at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center.
- **2010** — Taught Statistical Methods for Natural Language Processing at Columbia.
- **2013** — Founded Fusemachines and wrote its initial customer-service dialogue system.
- **2017** — Launched the Fusemachines AI Fellowship.
- **2025-10** — Fusemachines completed its CSLM business combination and began Nasdaq trading on October 23 under FUSE.
- **2026-05** — Published a proposal for sovereign AI compute infrastructure in Nepal.
- **2026-06** — Doctoral adviser Julia Hirschberg joined the Fusemachines board.

## Achievements

- Developed an early Nepali speech synthesizer as an undergraduate; Bates described the project as the first Nepali text-to-speech program in December 2000.
- Authored more than 20 research papers listed on his Columbia academic page.
- Founded Fusemachines in 2013 and led it through its October 2025 public-market debut.
- Established an AI Fellowship that reported more than 1,200 fellows trained in 12 countries by February 2026.

## Latest updates

- **2026-08** — Fusemachines announced a Qintess agreement with a binding minimum $6.5 million purchase commitment over three years; this is a contractual commitment, not reported realized revenue.
- **2026-06** — Fusemachines appointed Julia Hirschberg, Maskey’s doctoral adviser, to its board.
- **2026-05** — Maskey published Why Nepal must build a sovereign AI Factory in The Kathmandu Post.
- **2026-02** — Fusemachines announced its 2026 Nepal AI Fellowship and reported more than 1,200 fellows trained across 12 countries since 2017.
- **2026-02** — Fusemachines said its Interview AI Agent was assisting all of its initial technical screening interviews.
- **2025-10** — Fusemachines completed its business combination with CSLM and began Nasdaq trading on October 23.

## Links

- Website: https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smaskey/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sameer-maskey/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/sameermaskey

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/sameer-maskey
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-23