John Imah knows that the public version of his life can sound almost too neatly put together: the fashion tech founder, the Met Gala guest, the AI head of a $1.5 billion company, the man whose Instagram bio reads, “Rarely where you expect.” The real version, he insists, is harder to flatten into a headline.
He is a Nigerian-American entrepreneur, a former high-tech operator, a musician, a car collector, and the co-founder and CEO of SPREEAIthe fashion technology company that builds photorealistic virtual fitting, sizing intelligence and personalization for retailers. Inc. reported that SPREEAI reached a valuation of $1.5 billion by 2025 after raising nearly $100 million with partners including Sergio Hudson and Kai Collective.
That’s the business story. Imah’s more interesting story is what lies beneath it: the discipline, the taste, the privacy, and the part of him that still sounds more like a Dallas gang kid than a founder photographed on fashion’s biggest carpet.
He was a music kid before he was a fashion tech founder
Ask Imah about the most unexpected thing about himself, and he doesn’t reach for the obvious answer. Not the cars. Not the red carpets. Not the company’s valuation.
“I play French horn,” he says. “Like serious French horn, trumpet and piano.”
He knows the answer surprises people. From the outside, Imah’s life can be read as fashion pictures, sports cars, boardrooms and technology. But the music, he says, is where the noise falls. Piano still gives him a place to slow down. French horn and trumpet connect him with a younger version of himself, one more focused on rehearsal than visibility.
“Music has always been the other side of my brain,” he says. “Technology and fashion get all the press, but music is where I actually go and think.”
It makes sense once he explains it. At its core, SPREEAI is about precision and feel at the same time. The company’s product is built to let shoppers see clothes on themselves, not on a model who might not look like them. Its own product page describes the platform as a way to render a customer’s face, body and proportions in seconds without an avatar or scan. It’s technique. But the emotional promise is much more familiar: a person wants to know if something feels like them before they buy it.
Imah talks about style in the same way. For him, clothes are not decoration. They are communication.
His mother still shapes the way he dresses
Fashion, says Imah, started with his mother.
“She had this incredible sense of style, and she passed that on to me in a way that went deeper than just clothes,” he says. “It became how I communicate who I am without saying a word.”
His mother died of breast cancer, and Imah is careful to say how much of his style is still influenced by her. She taught him that dressing up could be an act of respect, not just self-expression. Respect for yourself. Respect for space. Respect for the moment.
That idea has followed him into the fashion space, where tech founders can sometimes look like outsiders in borrowed clothes. Imah doesn’t present like that. He seems to understand the clothes before the camera does.
At the 2026 Met Gala, he worked with designer Charles Harbison on a custom champagne-toned look inspired by the evening’s Costume Art theme, his Nigerian heritage and his background in technology. Inc. reported that the ensemble included a double-breasted suit, a gold-plated waistcoat and a long evening gown.
Imah describes the idea more simply: “We wanted it to feel like a circuit board and a West African king decided to collaborate.”
He is aware of the symbolism, but he is not interested in making the look feel like a costume. The point for him is not that the technology came into vogue. It’s that fashion and technology were never separate in his life.
“It was never one or the other,” he says. “Both have always been completely native to me.”
He does not fit the usual founder mold
Imah’s professional path has moved through some of the most recognizable names in technology. His own website notes experiences across Meta, Snap, Twitch, Amazon and Samsung, and he describes each chapter as giving him another piece of the puzzle.
Samsung taught him scale. Twitch showed him community. Snap sharpened its sense of culture and consumer behavior. Meta showed him what it means to build products that impact billions of people.
SPREEAI, he says, sits at the intersection of these lessons: technology, community, culture, personalization and scale.
He once compared himself to Goku from Dragon Ball Z, a character who doesn’t quite fit the mold he was supposed to be. Imah sees the parallel.
“I’m a Nigerian kid from Dallas who loves fashion and plays the French horn and has built a billion-dollar AI company,” he says. “I don’t fit the typical tech CEO profile. And I think that’s exactly why it works.”
Refusing to fit neatly into a category may be why the public has become curious about him beyond the company. He is polished but not overly approachable. Very visible, but still a bit elusive. Comfortable in model rooms, but still fluent in product language. Serious about work, but disarming when the conversation turns to jollof rice, late night Doritos or whatever makes a good first date.
Yes, he is single
Imah is direct about his relationship status.
“I’m not,” he says when asked if he’s dating anyone right now.
He does not perceive it as a permanent condition. He also doesn’t pretend that building at his pace leaves a lot of casual room. Success, he says, can make dating more complicated because attention and connection are not the same thing.
“Sometimes it filters the wrong stuff in and the right stuff out,” he says.
What actually keeps his attention isn’t someone impressed by what he’s built. It is one with its own world.
“One who has his own thing,” he says. “Her own world, her own ambitions, her own opinions.”
Intelligence matters. Humor matters. Trust matters. Presence matters. Imah says he notices how people treat others when there is nothing to gain, how they handle adversity, and whether they are genuinely committed or just acting the part.
His ideal first date is less about spectacle than atmosphere: good food, genuine conversation, a place special enough to remember but quiet enough to actually hear each other. The fastest way to lose him is to be more present with a phone than the person across the table.
For someone whose life can seem built around big moments, his romantic default is surprisingly practical. He wants intent.
“I’m not interested in giving someone half of me or fitting them into the space that’s left over,” he says. “When I choose someone, I choose consciously, and when I’m in, I’m all in.”
LA lets him dream. New York keeps him sharp
Imah splits his energy between Los Angeles and New York, and he doesn’t sound eager to pick just one.
LA, he says, is probably more him. He likes the space, the weather and the ability to think a few steps ahead. This is where he can create and keep focus on the bigger picture.
New York draws something else out of him.
“It keeps you sharp,” he says. “It moves fast, requires expertise, and doesn’t care who you are or what you accomplished yesterday. It only cares about what you’re doing right now.”
That tension suits him. A city gives him visions. The other gives him pressure. You let him dream bigger. The other pressures him to execute.
Even his latest favorite meal is less about status and more about attention to detail. He points to Masa in New York not only for the food, but for the craftsmanship and intention behind each course. The best meals, he says, aren’t just about what’s on the plate. They are about who is sitting at the table, the conversation and the moment that stays with you afterwards.
It’s a revealing answer from someone who builds technology around the same premise: the experience matters.
Winning is not the valuation
It would be easy to assume that Imah is chasing the next visible marker: another cover, another red carpet, another valuation milestone. He says the real victory looks calmer.
“When a kid in Lagos, Dallas, London or anywhere in the world opens SPREEAI and it just works perfectly, effortlessly, beautifully, and they have absolutely no idea how much blood, sweat, sacrifice, risk, rejection, sleepless nights and persistence went into making that moment possible,” he says. “That’s the win.”
He does not reject the public moments. He understands why they matter. A Met Gala appearance can say something about fashion’s relationship with technology. A larger valuation can prove that investors believe in a category. A magazine cover can make a founder legible to an audience that may never read a funding announcement.
But Imah’s destination is more personal than that.
He wants technology to disappear into trust. He wants someone to try on a look, see themselves more clearly, and feel a little more ready to show themselves as who they are. He wants a young entrepreneur, engineer, designer or creator to see his path and believe that their own dream can be bigger than they were told.
“Companies come and go, valuations rise and fall and headlines fade,” he says. “But to create something that changes how people experience the world and inspire others to believe they can do the same, that’s the kind of victory that lasts forever.”
Rarely where you expect him, perhaps. But after a while it starts to feel like the point.
