Google says its latest class of African AI startups has moved past the hype stage, with most already making money.
The company graduated 15 startups from the 10th cohort of its Google for Startups Accelerator Africa at a Demo Day in Nairobi, Kenya, it said this week. The class was picked from nearly 2,600 applications, meaning fewer than one in 100 applicants got in.
By Google’s account, the cohort is already commercially healthy: 60% of the 15 companies are profitable, with average monthly revenue of $60,000 and average funding of $1.1 million. “AI in Africa is no longer an experiment; it is a high-yielding engine for economic growth,” wrote Folarin Aiyegbusi, Google’s head of startup ecosystem for Africa.
Eight countries, five sectors
The graduating ventures come from eight countries: Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire and Angola. They work across fintech, mobility, healthtech, agritech and software-as-a-service.
Aiyegbusi argued that the founders are not simply attaching an “AI” label to ride a global trend, but are using machine learning to tackle local problems, processing fragmented data, and optimising markets that have long been hard to serve. The three-month programme, which ran from March to June, pairs startups with Google engineers and tools.
An equity-free bet
Google runs the accelerator on an equity-free basis, taking no stake in the companies and instead offering mentorship, technical support and product credits. It is the same model behind its other African startup programmes, including the Hustle Academy for small businesses.
Since the accelerator launched in 2018, Google says it has backed more than 190 startups across 17 African countries, with alumni going on to raise over $400 million and create more than 3,500 jobs, against $11 million in equity-free funding and credits from Google. The pitch fits a broader race to court African founders, from corporate accelerators to new pools of capital like the Flat6Labs and IFC programme in Algeria. The open question is how many of these AI ventures scale beyond their first profitable year.
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