A simple man with complex ambitions
Vitaly Kirkpatrick (formerly Vitaliy Mahidov) was born in Ukraine and raised in an orphanage and foster care until he aged out. He arrived in the United States in 2005 with almost nothing, earned a Computer Science degree from Utah Valley University (2009) and an MBA from the University of Utah (2016), and made one line his motto: “I am a simple man with complex ambitions.” He told the full story in his 2021 memoir, VITALY: The Misadventures of a Ukrainian Orphan.
The idea that became CloviFi started at a gym, wanting to keep hearing a TV while moving between machines. It grew into a WiFi HD audio transmitter built out of the University of Utah’s Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute, aimed at the 360 million people worldwide with disabling hearing loss who had few affordable options. The industry noticed: a CES 2018 Innovation Awards Honoree and a Commercial Integrator BEST Award. Then came the hard lesson — building and certifying one physical product is slow and capital-hungry, and by around 2022 the hardware operations wound down. In 2026, the same founder discipline relaunched as CloviTek AI: an automated engine that turns an idea into a full, branded software product.
- Verified, attributable facts only — no embellished metrics
- Heritage awards credited to the prior venture, CloviFi
- Pre-revenue stated plainly, every time
- Arrives in the US from Ukraine with minimal resources
- CS degree, Utah Valley University (2009)
- MBA, University of Utah (2016)
- Launches from the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute
- CES 2018 Innovation Awards Honoree
- Commercial Integrator BEST Award; exhibits at CES 2018 & 2019
- Hardware operations wind down amid COVID and funding constraints
- CloviTek AI relaunches as an AI platform factory
- Pre-revenue; building the engine and the suite
