Another ding {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? Researchers have developed a new material that can repair itself up to 1'000 times. They plan to use it for aeroplanes, in space, and, of course, to have your car self-heal like a Transformer.

Send this to your friend who's always crashing into stuff. 💥🚗

In This Open Letter

Innovation City's Startup of the Year 2026 is closing entries on 27 April. Pitch to investors and ecosystem enablers, win a year of Innovation City membership and Founder Collab access. Don't miss your shot.

TB is still the world's leading infectious disease, killing 1.23 million people globally, 54'000 of them in South Africa (one of the 30 highest-burden countries) in 2024 alone – this local venture is using their early Startup of the Year traction to change the game from SA…

We first covered AI Diagnostics in July 2024, the same year they took home the Innovation City Startup of the Year title, getting instant national recognition and access to investors and ecosystem enablers.

What that fame enabled them to do, though, is the real story…

The product, in case you missed it

AI Diagnostics makes an AI-powered digital stethoscope called the Ostium. A nurse holds it to a patient's chest, the device captures lung sounds, and the AI flags whether those sounds carry patterns associated with TB. No x-ray, radiologist – you don’t even need a specialist in the room.

Co-founder and CEO Braden van Breda came up through MedTech, building products for cardiothoracic specialists before realising Sub-Saharan Africa doesn't have nearly enough of them to deliver the interventions being designed. The most abundant healthcare resource we have here isn't specialists. It's nurses and community health workers. So he built for them.

From one pilot to 10+ countries

When we featured them, they'd just completed their first pilot in the Western Cape. Since then: A commercial launch in South Africa, clinical programmes running across more than 10 countries (including Zambia, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, India, Pakistan, Vietnam and Thailand), and a nine-country validation study underway with Stop TB, a technical partner of the WHO.

The goal? A WHO endorsement, which unlocks access to the Global Fund's procurement list, the mechanism through which most of the world's TB programmes are actually funded. And rather than waiting to see if the endorsement lands, the team is already building the distribution infrastructure, clinical support systems and firmware update capabilities needed to operate at that scale. As Braden puts it: plan for success.

This month, AI Diagnostics closed a pre-Series A raise of R85 million, led by The Steele Foundation for Hope with participation from the iFSP Group, Global Innovation Fund and follow-on from key angel investors. But Braden specifically points out that a big part of AI Diagnostics' success is the team behind it: 16 permanent staff, plus an extended network of development and research partners.

When your mission is accessible diagnostics for those who need it most, it turns out, people really want to help you build it.

We're watching this space…

Early recognition helped them gain massive traction. Want the same for your startup? We teamed up with Innovation City for this year's Startup of the Year. Entries close 27 April: Enter now →

Have your say…

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⛏️ Eskom Goes Mining. Remember when we told you Eskom's going Bitcoin mining? The latest is that they need NERSA's approval, and thus need to present them with a framework of how they plan to sell the daytime electricity surplus. Hmmmm.

🦸 Fighting The Bad Guys. Digital banking fraud is on the rise, with nearly 98'000 cases reported last year and nearly R1.9 billion in losses, with AI breaking the old detection rulebook. Here’s what’s happening and who’s fighting back.

🪙 Coining It. SA is getting new gold and silver coins over the next few years. The coins, including a series on the Big 5, The Odyssey, African Range, the Chinese Lunisolar Calendar and the Colours of Africa, will range from R5 to R1'000 and be legal tender like Krugerrands.

🤖 Google's AI Intern. Google has launched a swathe of AI-powered features to Workspace, including building and filling out Google Sheets, new AI writing tools and converting rando data into structured tables. "Hey Gemini, you missed a zero in column B, and I've lost a multi-million Rand deal." "You're absolutely right…"

⏱️ Payroll 8× Faster. Cape Union Mart's payroll team was stuck fixing errors and fighting downtime. So Deel Local Payroll, powered by PaySpace, replaced the old system with a cloud platform that cut payroll processing from 4 days to just half a day, eliminating downtime and freeing the team to focus on real operational improvements.*

* From our partners. Find all the best service providers for your business in our Founder Stack.

Get the best in SA tech and business news →

So many founders try to follow the Silicon Valley model, but the truth is that Africa and South Africa are a different ecosystem, and raising capital could be more trouble than it’s worth (or you might not even need it). So we got the co-founder of one of SA’s best-known venture capital firms to come and show us how they operate…

And it turns out, there are 3 specific steps you can do right now to know if you should go after VC funding or bootstrap in SA.

☝ Send this to a friend who always has 10 new million-dollar ideas.

Yesterday, we showed you Lekker Build’s 60-second website builder, asking about your business website. And would you believe most here haven’t gotten around to it yet…?

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 🟢 Yes, and it does real work for me (24%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ 🟡 Yes, but it's basically a digital business card (27%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🔧 Sort of — just a Facebook page or Google listing (6%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🚧 No, but I've been meaning to sort it (30%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ❌ No, and I don't think I need one (13%)

🤖 Databricks/AI Engineer

📊 Data Scientist

🧠 Senior Data Engineer

🔌 Application Developer

🛠️ Lead Backend/API Developer

📋 Lead Systems Analyst

We asked a major SA telecoms founder what one piece of advice he'd give to new founders — and what he said is a reminder to stay humbly excited about the road ahead…

Don’t miss all the extra operator interviews and insights content we do on our social channels — come enjoy the vibez.

🎵 Tool to Try: GigTrip lets you discover concerts on a map.

📉 That's Interesting: US student math and reading scores have dropped so sharply they've erased nearly two decades of progress, with 13-year-old maths back to 1990s levels. Wonder what our local stats say…

🫧 Next Level: A free diver captured the moment two bubble rings collided and dissolved into one larger circle.

🐼 Wow Site: BlackAndWhiteBear lets you search and view giant pandas.