Meet the 10 startups joining the first Google Africa Applied AI Lab cohort
A farmer in Senegal gets a voice message on her phone telling her when to water and when to harvest, based on satellite images of her field. A nurse in a rural clinic in Uganda checks a patient's symptoms against an AI tool that works on a low-cost phone with no internet connection. A woman in Nigeria who has never touched a smartphone dials a number on her basic handset, asks a question in Hausa, and hears the answer read back to her by AI. These are not ideas on a whiteboard.
Pioneered by African founders, these products demonstrate the profound impact of AI when it is built from the ground up to align with local contexts and daily realities across the continent.
We launched the Google Africa Applied AI Lab to accelerate the global impact of African-led products and innovations.
Africa is home to one of the fastest-growing developer communities globally, with founders consistently solving complex challenges under resource constraints. However, many teams still require early access to frontier AI models and technical mentorship to scale research into commercial products. Managed by the Google AI Futures Fund alongside Google Research, the Lab was established to address this need—building directly on our ongoing commitment to support AI research, talent, and startups across Africa.
When we invited submissions in July, the response was inspiring. By the time the window closed on August 31, we had received thousands of entries from startups across more than 45 African countries. Some are already running AI at scale for banks, retailers and telecoms providers. Others are exploring what AI can do on a low-cost phone, or in orbit. After reviewing each team's technical plans and traction, we're delighted to introduce the 10 startups in our first cohort:
- AethexAI (Pan-African): Provides fast, responsive AI voice agents for banks, telecoms providers and customer support centres.
- Agrails (Pan-African): Building AI-powered insurance infrastructure for farmers, gig workers, and small borrowers.
- Crane AI Labs (Uganda): Builds offline, on-device AI tools for health workers and schools on affordable phones.
- Intron (Nigeria): Builds clinical and enterprise speech recognition that understands African accents and code-switched speech.
- Satlyt (Kenya): Turns satellites into connected computing nodes so data can be processed in orbit.
- Smile ID (Pan-African): Uses computer vision to verify identity and help financial services onboard customers securely.
- Termii (Nigeria): Powers customer verification, messaging and operational alerts for financial services.
- Tolbi (Senegal): Combines satellite imagery with voice guidance to help smallholder farmers improve their yields.
- Vendy (Nigeria): Lets businesses run storefronts and take payments directly inside WhatsApp.
- Viamo (Pan-African): Brings generative AI to people without smartphones through basic phone calls in local languages.
Over the coming weeks, these teams will work side by side with Google engineers, research scientists and product leaders, building with models such as Gemini and Gemma. They will also receive guidance from the Lab's venture capital partners, 4DX Ventures, Norrsken22, Novastar Ventures and Ventures Platform, on taking their products to market and growing sustainable businesses.
In December, the cohort will come together in Accra for a demo day at the Accra AI Community Centre, where the founders will show what they have built to investors, industry leaders and the wider community.
The priorities these teams are addressing are crucial for Africa, and the breakthroughs they pioneer here will redefine possibilities globally. Congratulations to all 10, and thank you to everyone who applied. We'll share the cohort's progress on the Google Africa Blog and our social channels in the months ahead.
