Bout time {{ FIRSTNAME }}? This AI robot company went full tilt and had its bot fight the CEO as a marketing stunt. It’s the new bar, peeps: Your robot’s no good unless it beats up the boss. 🤕

In Today’s Open Letter

Running out of natural gas? Not a problem, this startup’ll make it out of cactus and then some…

South Africa needs R35 billion’s worth of natural gas per year, just 3% of our energy mix. But Gov’s new Gas Master Plan 2024 requires SA to seriously up gas supply by 2030 to offset coal, to the tune of a 92% increase to R63bn per year.

The problem? SA has no gas. When the Mossel Bay fields ran dry in 2020, SA went from 65.1% independence in 2015 to relying on Mozambique for 99.9% of our gas. Now that supply is being cut off in 2026, with Sasol maybe extending it to 2027/28.

That’s a big problem for SA’s R60bn per year metal industry, R50bn glass industry, R4.4 trillion auto manufacturing industry, and most of our food & beverage industry – with around half a million jobs on the line. Ouch.

The local startup with a plan

Luckily, OPUS Cactus just came out of stealth: After 3 years of serious R&D, they’ve unveiled a massive plan, including a 1’000-hectare farm (the biggest of its kind in the southern hemisphere) with over 200 hectares’ worth of cultivated… prickly pears?

Uh-huh, ‘cos, apart from the delicious fruit, they’ve developed a unique way to convert spineless Opuntia cultivars into biogas. By harvesting the “leaves” and introducing a special bacteria in an oxygen-free environment, you get a 55% methane / 45% biogenic CO2 mix that can be converted into biomethane and fed into existing gas pipelines.

To prove it works, the team invited peeps to the farm in November, for a cactus gas braai…

Founded in 2020, with strategic private investment from the Netherlands (allowing the team to headquarter in Groningen, unlocking lekker Dutch R&D grants), OPUS Cactus is set to begin commercial-scale biogas production in 2027.

That’s just the beginning, though, says Business Developer Jan-Willem Kruijt…

Value-added diversification 

In the name of efficiency and multiplication of efforts, the team simultaneously creates:

With SA’s semi-arid climate and abundant land, and finding so many awesome uses for it, we’re not surprised OPUS Cactus was a Startup of the Year finalist, and can’t wait to see them go full-throttle in the next few years.

We’re watching this space.

Who still prints forms for labour disputes?

The CCMA is introducing a new WhatsApp chatbot for dispute referrals, letting South Africans lodge cases, track progress and get updates without touching a computer.

The clever parts:

✅ Capture referrals, submit forms and receive notifications inside WhatsApp
✅ GenAI-powered guidance helps users complete cases without paperwork
✅ Track disputes, chat to case officers and move from referral to resolution

With over 30 million South Africans on WhatsApp, this could bring the CCMA closer to the people it serves.

What would you build on WhatsApp today?

6 Signs your side hustle is about to blow up…

The gap between SA’s formal and informal sectors is widening: 15’000 informal businesses were shut down in Gauteng alone this year – 800k more are in Gov’s sights.

But how do you know when it’s time to make it official and register a company?

Govchain created this super-easy guide, including:

Plus: What to expect when registering, how long it takes and how little it actually costs.

🐺 Joining the Wolf Pack. Community safety App Community Wolf has acquired emergency-response app Namola. The deal will see Namola continue as a standalone app, but by combining efforts, the model is set to deliver faster detection, smarter coordination and more reliable emergency assistance. Lekker one, folks.

🇬🇧 SPAR’s Brexit. SA retailer SPAR is in the process of selling its UK business in a bid to focus on its core markets and roll out new growth formats like its upper-end Gourmet offering. Nice.

🚙 Metaverse Car Buying. South Africa just got its very first car dealership — in the metaverse. The Lazarus Motor Group’s metaverse dealership lets users walk through a 3D showroom, check out vehicle models, switch colour options, and interact with Laz, an AI-powered sales assistant. Very cool.

🤖 Err’body Gets An Agent. Google’s just dropped Workspace Studio, its no-code platform that lets employees design and deploy AI agents using Gemini 3. Here’s the thing, you don't even need to use any fancy language, just say what you want to do and it auto builds an agent to do it for you. Jinne…

✅ The Stack. Founders need reliable tools, so our Founder’s Stack gives you tech content marketing by Stream, tech, acceleration and funding with Octoco and loads more.

When you share, we give you cool free stuff.

Yesterday, we showed you how SwapVend is digitising barter deals in SA, asking what you’re bartering in Januworry. For most, it’s unique abilities…

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🧰 Skills (37%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🍞 Goods (19%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ ⏳ Time (19%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 💡 Know-how (25%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤝 Favours (0)

Your 2 cents…

Nice, Clay! Hope you strike some good deals. 🚀

There you have it, contractors ☝ respond to this email and we’ll connect you with Theresa.

Building for the ocean? OceanHub Africa’s 12-month accelerator backs high-potential ocean-impact startups with growth support, global networks, and access to catalytic capital. Apply by 30 Dec. Apply here.

Scaling in Africa? develoPPP Ventures offers €100k (about R2 million) non-dilutive funding, plus up to €200k (about R4 million) top-up, for tech-enabled, revenue-generating SA startups with matching funds. Apply by 31 Dec.

R200k–R1m funding? Orange Corners OCIF GROW backs youth-led SA businesses with hybrid grant/loan capital to scale innovative products and teams. Apply before 31 Dec.

Eco-entrepreneurs (16–28): Mercedes-Benz Fellowship funds 1'000 young innovators tackling environmental challenges. Apply by 12 Jan. Apply here.

Want to promote your event/programme here? Let us know.

💡 Tool to Try: BeatViz auto-generates beat-synced music videos for your tracks.

🤖 That’s Interesting: A supposed AI unicorn that raised $450M in 2023 turned out to have no AI at all: just a software farm of 700 humans writing code manually in the backend.

⚽ Next Level: Now this is how you play football 1’800m up in the sky.

⏳ Hack: Visual guide to 11 time-management systems for boosting productivity.

🕒 Wow Site: Is It Worth The Time calculates whether automating a task saves enough time to justify doing it.

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