A scalable, real-world future: Class 10 AI startups redefine African tech
Last week at the Google for Startups Accelerator Africa Demo Day in Nairobi, we celebrated the graduation of 15 brilliant, AI-driven startups from our 10th cohort. When we first opened applications for this cohort back in April, the response was staggering. We received nearly 2,600 applications from across Africa, meaning less than one percent made it into the final room. Standing on the sidelines of Demo Day, I was asked what separated these final 15 teams from the thousands that applied. For me, it came down to three things especially: product-market fit, program fit, and sheer founder potential.
We saw that these startups weren’t just adding an ‘AI’ tag to their solutions because it’s part of a global conversation. Instead, they are utilizing Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to help them solve the peculiar, complex infrastructure challenges across the continent
And their commercial health proves it. An incredible 60% of this year’s cohort are already profitable startups, yielding an average monthly revenue of $60,000, with an average of $1.1 million raised. They are proving that AI in Africa is no longer an experiment, it is a high-yielding engine for economic growth
Clearing the bottlenecks for real-world impact
There is still a lot of noise out there making AI sound like an abstract, mystical concept. But to our founders, it is simply a powerful tool to process massive amounts of unstructured data, analyze complex variables, and optimize local markets that have been fragmented for decades
From March to June, we paired these 15 teams with advanced Google technologies and our global engineering experts. Our goal was simple: provide the technical infrastructure and mentorship needed to remove the friction of building at scale
Our role at Google is to serve as a supportive partner. That’s why we rely on a blended model of equity-free support and direct connections to Google services, ensuring these founders have the exact mentorship and tools they need to thrive
Meet the Class 10 graduates rewriting the rules
Our graduating cohort brings together exceptional growth-stage ventures from eight countries: Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, and Angola. They span critical sectors like Fintech, Mobility, Healthtech, Agritech, and SaaS, East African Innovators:
- Coamana(Kenya): Uses AI to interpret real-time data, making informal traditional food supply chains visible and trackable for businesses and governments.
- Duck(Kenya): Equips consumer brands with real-time floor data intelligence to eliminate retail stockouts.
- ReportsAI(Kenya): Converts raw, unstructured data into institutional compliance-ready reporting for impact organisations.
- VunaPay(Kenya): Delivers fintech data infrastructure tailored to agricultural cooperatives to resolve delayed payments for smallholder farmers.
- Safiri(Tanzania): Establishes digital infrastructure to power reliable transportation, logistics, and tourism experiences across Africa.
- Emaisha Pay(Uganda): Drives agro-trade payments and embedded financing for agricultural productivity.
- West & Central African Trailblazers:
- Bani(Nigeria): Builds cross-border payment infrastructure for African businesses.
- MasteryHive AI(Nigeria): Provides AI-native transaction reconciliation and anti-money laundering monitoring.
- Regxta(Nigeria): Leverages alternative data credit scoring to open up finance for unbanked micro-businesses.
- Termii(Nigeria): Delivers AI-native communications infrastructure specialised for financial messaging.
- Maad(Senegal): Operates an AI-powered omnichannel platform to optimise routes to market for consumer brands.
- Meditect(Côte d’Ivoire): Digitises local African pharmacies through secure cloud software infrastructure.
- Southern African Visionaries:
- Anda Africa(Angola): Powers AI-backed alternative credit scoring models specifically for informal moto-taxi workers.
- Loop(South Africa): Focuses on the digitisation of mobility and commuter payments.
- Vambo AI(South Africa): Builds foundational multilingual AI infrastructure designed for African languages, breaking down digital access barriers.
Our commitment to African innovation
Since we launched the Google for Startups Accelerator Africa programme back in 2018, our mission has remained entirely unchanged: to unlock profound, sustainable change by putting specialized re
To date, we have supported over 190 startups across 17 African countries. Our proud alumni network has gone on to collectively raise more than $400 million and create over 3,500 jobs, backed by Google’s contribution of $11 million in equity-free funding and product credits
When we empower highly scalable, purpose-driven cohorts like Class 10, we aren’t just backing isolated businesses. We are working alongside you to build the foundational infrastructure of Africa’s digital economy. I cannot wait to see how these 15 companies continue to use AI to magnify their impact and showcase true African tech excellence on the global stage
