South African startup Verascient raises R19.5m to help businesses make better use of AI

Businesses are buying AI tools, but there is a problem that does not get talked about enough.The information those tools need is often sitting everywhere. A customer’s details might be in one system. Their payment history could be in another. Someone’s email may contain an important decision, while a spreadsheet holds the numbers needed to act on it. Cape Town startup Verascient is building around this problem. The company has raised $1.2 million, about R19.5 million, in its first funding round. Founder Collective led the round, with Andrena Ventures, Cambridge Enterprise and Summit Ventures also participating. Angel investors Alan Knott-Craig and Shayne Mann also invested. The startup wants to connect the information already sitting inside businesses so that companies can do more with it.

The problem is scattered information

Most companies have plenty of information. The issue is that employees often have to search across several systems to find what they need. Sales may have customer information. Finance has payment records. Operations has its own spreadsheets and software. Important decisions can also disappear into old emails and meeting notes. That becomes a bigger issue when a business wants software to work across all of it. Verascient says its platform connects with more than 1,000 business systems. It also tracks where information comes from, who can access it and how it changes over time. The goal is to give businesses a way to connect information without having to throw away the systems they already use.

It is starting with industries that have a lot of moving parts

Verascient is initially targeting financial services, insurance and logistics. These businesses deal with large amounts of information every day, often across several departments and software platforms. The startup works with customers to identify processes where its technology can take over some of the manual work. That could involve finding information across systems, moving information between steps in a process or helping employees get answers without searching through several platforms. Verascient also sends engineers to work with customers directly. That part matters because every business has its own way of doing things. A system that works for an insurer may not work the same way for a logistics company.

The founders are building from Cape Town

Verascient was founded by Keagan Stokoe and Emile Ferreira. Ferreira was an early developer at Replit and later completed an MPhil in Advanced Computer Science at the University of Cambridge. Stokoe was part of the founding team at South African fibre company Fibertime before starting Purple Dorm, an AI consultancy. The company is now building its engineering team in South Africa while looking for customers internationally. The funding will help Verascient hire more engineers and continue building its platform.

Now it has to prove the business case

The $1.2 million gives the company room to grow, but the funding itself does not prove that the product works at scale. Verascient needs businesses to see a clear return from connecting their information. If the technology can help an insurer process claims faster, help a logistics company find information without jumping between systems, or reduce hours of manual work in financial services, then the value becomes easier to see. That is the part worth watching. The AI market already has plenty of companies building tools that can write, search and answer questions. Verascient is betting on something less flashy: helping businesses make sense of the information they already have. The company now has $1.2 million to build that product and grow its team. The next step is turning that funding into customers.