About

I’m Uchi Uchibeke (Uchi as in Gucci), builder, connector, and founder. My work focuses on creating opportunity rails: products, programs, and partnerships that help people learn, build, earn, and spend.

Uchi Uchibeke

I keep a verifiable ledger on Projects. If you’re looking for help or a quick nudge, book Office Hours.

What I’m building now

APort — pre-action authorization for AI agents. I wrote the Open Agent Passport specification, an open standard that checks what an agent is allowed to do before a tool call executes, rather than hoping the model behaves. MIT licence, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.18901596. Role: Founder, author of the spec and the paper. Focus: the authorization decision itself, policy packs, framework integrations.

I ran it against 3,900+ real authorization decisions in a public capture-the-flag with a 5,000 dollar bounty. Attackers social-engineered the model over 70 percent of the time on the permissive tier and 0 percent of the time on the restrictive one, across 800+ attempts. Nobody claimed the bounty. The interesting part is that the model never got better; the architecture did the work.
Chimoney — cross-border payments infrastructure for platforms, NGOs, and communities. Wound down in May 2026 after raising under a million dollars, then acquired by CapitalSage Vantage in an agreement signed that June, closing in phases. I am leading the transition through close. Role: Founder and CEO. Focus: developer experience, corridors, compliance, reliability.
World Innovation League (WIL) → DTTP — a training-to-job program that turns learning into paid work. Role: Founder. Focus: partner briefs, mentorship, placements, reporting.
Oruly AI — a hybrid AI + human workspace to post tasks, form teams, and get results. Role: Founder. Focus: orchestration, QA, verified contributors.
Freelance Ledger — AI-assisted finance ops for independents (smart invoicing, payments, analytics, tax). Role: Founder. Focus: invoicing UX, voice input, and payments.
Food Waste Log — food-waste tracking and a growing library of restaurant ops templates. Role: Creator. Focus: adoption via simple templates; in-product logging.

Graduated work: AfricaHacks (→ WIL) and NaijaHacks (→ AfricaHacks).

What I believe

Excellence, speed, and impact are my Core Values and are embodied in all Projects I lead.
Positive-sum (sharing, partnership, and collaboration) over zero-sum games.
To succeed, we need to put in hard and smart work, determination, and grit
Artifacts > adjectives. Show the work. Link the proof. Credit the team.
Talent + Opportunity = Win. Systems unlock opportunity for everyone and lower the friction for people to participate and get paid.
Opportunity compounds. A single intro, stipend, or small grant can tilt a career.
Quality, timelessness, and functionality over flash and noise in everything.

How I work with others

Office Hours (weekly, 4×15-min): funding intros, GTM feedback, grants/reporting mechanics, hiring referrals. → Book a slot
Open collaboration: I prefer short pilots with clear outcomes, a credit line in public comms, and shared artifacts.

Selected impact (representative)

Helped newcomers and underrepresented builders move from training to interviews and paid projects via WIL/DTTP.
Enabled global payouts for programs that previously couldn’t pay contributors reliably.
Shipped lightweight tools (Freelance Ledger, Food Waste Log) that reduce admin and waste so people can focus on real work.

(See details, partners, and artifacts on Projects.)

Speaking & advisory

Topics I speak on:

Payments & financial access (Africa ↔ global corridors)
Developer Relations and Open-source Advocacy
Community-to-work pipelines (WIL/DTTP playbook)
Built-in-public without hype (logs, artifacts, credit)
Founder operating systems (deep work, boundary setting)

Advisory/mentorship: selective—operator-led products that expand access or reduce friction. → Use Office Hours or email for fit.

Contact

Best: /office-hours for quick requests.
Email: uchi [dot] uchibeke [at] gmail [dot] com
Also on X/Twitter and LinkedIn (DMs open).

Press and speaking

If you are announcing a talk and need a photo, use the headshot at the top of this page. The file is a 2000 by 1591 JPEG.

Download the headshot

Use it on event pages and slides without asking me first, credited to Uchi Uchibeke. The two bios below are written for the same purpose, so take whichever length fits.

Short bio (3rd-person for events)

Uchi Uchibeke is a builder and founder focused on building rails unlocking opportunities money-movement and career-acceleration space. Toronto-based, he founded and leads Chimoney (API-first payouts & multi-currency wallets) and created the World Innovation League’s DTTP program, and is building several AI and Digital Identity projects. He ships cross-border payout flows (Interledger, banks, mobile money) and lean AI ops. A former DevRel/community lead behind AfricaHacks/NaijaHacks, he writes a weekly Build Log, speaks on payouts, ILP, and talent pipelines and runs weekly Office Hours to open doors for emerging builders and teams.

Long bio (3rd-person for events)

Uchi Uchibeke is a payments and product operator who turns multi-country ideas into shipped systems. Based in Toronto, he founded Chimoney, an API-first orchestration layer for collections, payouts, and multi-currency wallets, and leads LiftRails, a boutique practice that designs and launches cross-border flows (Interledger, bank rails, mobile money) and AI-powered operations. He created the World Innovation League’s DTTP program—briefs → placements → reporting—to help organizations build repeatable talent pipelines. Previously a developer-relations and community lead, he started AfricaHacks/NaijaHacks and mentors builders through public office hours and a running build log. Uchi speaks about payout design, ILP/micropayments, and building teams and products across geographies. His north star: make it easier for people to earn, learn, and get paid, then share the playbook so others can do the same.