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In This Open Letter

We lead Africa's AI adoption, so no surprise that this week alone, we featured locals using AI to hold municipalities accountable, slash compliance costs and produce fashion shoots 90x faster. But the most interesting AI work in SA isn't always making headlines — it's happening inside the operations of founders who are quietly building with it every day…

Here are some of them, shipping powerful builds with AI you might not have seen, but are making a real impact in real SA businesses:

Philip Joubert, co-founder of Magic Safari, built SuperDojo, a tool that lets you hire AI versions of top professionals (strategists, marketers, product leads) and deploy them as your team. And that's just a side project, you won’t believe what he's building within the business.

Nick Mills, founder of Community Wolf, a safety platform across an industry with almost zero infrastructure. AI gives his small team the leverage to do what would normally take 10x the headcount. That’s besides all his insanely cool side-projects.

Simon Ellis, founder of Jem HR, where, last week, 73% of Jem's engineering support tickets were closed autonomously (little to no human intervention). Their sales team runs 5 AI agents in parallel, pulling live data from HubSpot to Notion to Google Calendar. And Simon also spun out a specialist AI unit helping other SA businesses do the same.

Dr McElory Hoffmann, CEO of Praelexis, which builds things like Intelligene: translates your genetic profile into lifestyle recommendations that update in real time as new research drops. And Ria, a voice-first app that lets elderly people share their life stories through natural conversation, then structures them into a biography that families can actually read.

You should also take note of Dirren Subbiah, head of data ecosystems at ShopriteX, who helped unlock substantial benefits from price discovery and Alex Shabala, group head of data science at Capitec, who played a key role in the deployment of Capitec Pulse AI, and so much more. 

Because on 4 June, you get to meet them all in Cape Town

Our own Renier Kriel, who himself used AI to double ARR in one part of our business and built a platform where other SA ventures trade R100k+ in a single day, hosts them all in an event to show how real SA operators deploy AI in real businesses today. Expect the workflows, the failures, the numbers behind the numbers.

And this is probably your last chance to make sure you’re in the room. 'Cos tickets are almost sold out – get yours before they’re gone.

Have your say…

You've seen the signals. You know your business is ready for an international structure. But "going global" can feel like a wall of complexity: jurisdictions, legal entities, tax treaties, compliance. Where do you even begin?

Start with one conversation.

Finance Isle of Man is the Isle of Man government's promotional body for the island's financial services sector. Their job isn't to sell you something; it's to connect you with the right people.

Here's what that looks like in practice: You visit their site, explore the sectors and services relevant to your business and reach out. FIOM helps match you with advisors who understand cross-border structuring for businesses like yours. No pressure, no pitch, just the right introductions.

🤖 AI Without a Plan. 67% of SA's large enterprises are using AI, but most have no strategy for it. Team members are already building with it; the proof of value at the company level needs to come next.

🚀 SpaceX Goes Public. SpaceX has formally filed its S-1 with the SEC, planning to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX with a debut targeted for 18 June. The listing is expected to be the largest IPO in history, potentially valuing the company between $1.5 and $2 trillion. Casual.

📱 RICA's Blind Spot. Foreign providers are selling RICA avoidance as an eSIM feature, exposing a gap in South Africa's SIM-registration rules. Perhaps a chance for local MVNOs to fill the gap and be ahead of the curve when regulation hits.

🛡️ Armoured Cherry. An SA company has created the first armoured Chery Tiggo 9; they've been doing this for 9 years across a range of vehicles. We didn't even know of them, but now we want one.

💻 Skip the Delaware Detour. Stop paying the Stripe-via-Delaware tax. Paystack is built in Africa, available in SA, and you can be live before lunch. One link, no detour.*

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

Yesterday, we featured RAHN Monitor sanction screening, asking what the biggest compliance headache is for SA businesses. It was a dead heat between changing regulations and not knowing where to begin…

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🏦 The cost of screening tools (17%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 📋 Keeping up with changing regulations (39%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🔍 Too many false positives to sift through (4%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🤷 Not knowing where to even start (40%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💸 Budgeting for fines instead of fixing the problem (0%)

⚙️ Senior DevOps Engineer

🔐 Senior DevSecOps Engineer

🔌 Senior Backend Developer

📋 Product Owner

🛠️ Principal Software Engineer

💻 Software Developer (EI)

We asked a fast-moving SA founder how AI is impacting their daily operations — and the answer is a reminder that new tools used right can unlock amazing new abilities…

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

📬 Tool to Try: Pounce lets you know if someone on X or Reddit has conversations your brand can answer (in seconds).

🚬 That's Interesting: China consumes 46% of all cigarettes in the entire world; 2.4 trillion a year.

🤸 Next Level: This young girl has insane hand-eye coordination.

🟢 Wow Site: It's Friday, and you might enjoy watching endless balls try to make it through a maze.

Oh, oh, our beloved Cape Town startup now has only 9 weeks of runway left to become a unicorn. Will they? Find out: There's a new comic strip every Friday, only in The Open Letter.

Got a favourite? Meet all the South of Series A characters here.

☝ Send this to a friend you'd build a startup with. 🦄