Weird taxes {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? Jeff Bezos reckons the US shouldn’t tax those who earn $50k a year, ‘cos they contribute just 3% of taxes. In SA, the exact equivalent (R828k per year) contributes the bulk (50%+), but a living standards equivalent at around R240k a year (circa R20k per month) category is only 0.5% of SA’s tax. Would you consider scrapping tax for that bracket?

Send this to a friend who gets cranky around tax season. 💰

In This Open Letter

Data centres guzzle 2 billion litres of water a day and AI costs you a fortune in tokens. But a new wave of desktop hardware is flipping the whole model…

The elephant in the server room is that cloud-based AI computing requires massive data centres, threatening an environmental crisis – in 2025 alone, they consumed enough water for 1.3 billion people. Google's had to promise to give the water back and Microsoft’s trying to rebuild centres to use as little water as a restaurant.

Meta is so hungry for compute that they're now building “data centres” that are literally just tents out in a field.

But why does AI need all this compute?

If you think about it, the centralised compute problem is the same thing making AI expensive. Your query needs to run via the cloud, travel to Zuck’s Ohio tent city to get processed and back, multiplied by billions every day.

Surely there’s a cheaper and less damaging way to run AI compute…

The supercomputer on your desk

Indeed. Developer @w1nklerr on X recently posted that he was spending $1'900 (R31.5k) a month renting cloud GPUs for client AI work. Fine-tuning models, hosting a 70B assistant, processing document batches. 

When he heard about NVIDIA's DGX Spark (about the size of a thick paperback), which packs a full petaflop of compute and 128GB of unified memory, enabling it to load AI models that a normal computer can’t.

He bought a DGX Spark for $2'999 (R49.6k) and now has no monthly compute costs (apart from R165’s worth of electricity). The box paid for itself in under two months, and now he’s heading for first-year savings of around $22'000 (R365k) on the same client work he was already invoicing.

It's not the only option either. Apple's Mac Studio M4 Ultra ($4'400+) and AMD's Strix Halo mini PCs (~$2'200) are all competing in the same space.

Where this gets interesting

If you’re in the AI space, hosting it locally unlocks more than savings: No more rationing every query to save costs; if you own the compute, you can go to town. 

Replacing the monstrosities people are protesting over while unlocking more compute at a fraction of the cost? Yes please. 

We're watching this space…

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🛒 Bash Powers TFG While Profits Tumble. TFG's Bash platform drove a 49.2% surge in e-commerce sales even as group earnings fell a third and R1bn in offshore write-downs piled up. Online now makes up 14.8% of total retail.

🧠 Hoffman Goes Founder Mode. LinkedIn creator Reid Hoffman is leaving Microsoft's board to go all-in on new venture, Manas AI. A $26bn LinkedIn acquisition, the first $1bn OpenAI bet and the $650m Inflection acqui-hire — keep an eye on what he does next.

🤖 SA's AI Policy Dream Team. Minister Solly Malatsi hand-picked a seven-person expert panel to fix the draft national AI policy, including Wits' Benjamin Rosman, Lelapa AI's Vukosi Marivate and UCT's Alison Gillwald. We can think of a few more peeps that should be on there, but SA seems to be trying hard.

🍗 Nando's Got Hacked. A hacker claims to have breached Nando's UK and Ireland, putting 87'000 employee records on sale for $1'000 (R16'222). Employee records? Why not steal the recipe for their lekker peri chicken instead?

🏆 Global Scale Enabled. Deel Local Payroll (formerly PaySpace) had the product but needed to scale globally. So, SA cloud scaling specialist Cloud on Demand simplified the Azure migration and go-to-market for faster launches, stronger performance and steady inbound leads.*

👔 Founder Math. There are 30 Jonsson Workwear stores nationwide, with embroidery onsite, your team's shirts, your own blazer and a Saturday jacket all sorted in one trip. The reason you haven't been outfitting this way yet is that you didn't know you could. Now you do.*

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

Ponzi schemes are hijacking Africa’s crypto. As adoption accelerates, Binance is flagging a rise in Ponzi-style schemes repackaged as crypto, targeting first-time users with "guaranteed returns." Binance's Larry Cooke: "Taking a moment to verify information can make a meaningful difference."

Binance leaders love SA. Two senior Binance execs touched down in SA for the first time and came away impressed by the depth of the local crypto conversation. Plus, they reckon JHB has the best meat in the world. Correct.

Binance spends $300m a year on compliance. A new blog details how 24+ AI initiatives and 100+ AI models now power Binance's compliance and risk operations. Yet compliance teams still make up roughly 25% of the company's global workforce.

Disclaimer: Digital asset prices can be volatile. The value of your investment may go down or up and you may not get back the amount invested. You are solely responsible for your investment decisions and Binance is not liable for any losses you may incur. Not financial advice. For more information, see our Terms of Use and Risk Warning.

Most founders end the week realising half their time went on questions only they can answer, 'cos the knowledge lives in their head and no one reads a wiki. So we got an SA ops pro who's built teams locally and scaled to Europe to show us how it's done.

Turns out, there are 4 steps to capturing your knowledge and stopping being your team's human FAQ.

☝️ Send this to a friend who's had it with the work wiki. 📚

Last week, we showed you Yeba's AI university OS, asking about the biggest issue facing SA universities. Most here agree students need support…

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 📚 Students don't get enough support outside the classroom (31%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📝 Lecturers are too buried in marking to spot who's struggling (5%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📊 Institutions have the data but no tooling to use it (20%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💰 The funding model sets students up to fail before they start (20%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 🤖 The tech exists but universities are too slow to adopt it (24%)

Your 2 cents…

Honestly, same, Sue. 🎓

Leadership Lessons: Q&A with Mike Fisher – 10 Jun, Online: The CEO of MyFitnessPal and ex-CTO of Etsy on escaping the output trap and why shipping fast in the wrong direction is still the wrong direction. Hosted by OfferZen. Register free.

Stop Building Things Nobody Wants – 11 Jun, CPT: Annu Augustine (NedRock) on product discovery; why 80% of features go unused and how to test assumptions before you burn budget. Save your spot.

Founder Collab Co-Working Session – 11 Jun, CPT: A casual working morning at Innovation City: bring your laptop, get focused work done and swap ideas with other founders. No agenda, just good company. Free for members.

How to Start, Scale and Sell an Agency – 12 Jun, Online: Specno co-founder Jacques Jordaan on the real ops and strategy challenges of growing a services business from scratch to exit-ready. Free for members.

The Next-Gen Engineer – 25 Jun, Online: OfferZen's engineering and talent leads on what high-performing teams actually hire for in the AI era — plus panellists from Impact.com and Pollinate. Free toolkit for attendees. Register free.

🧩 Tool to Try: SKU Analyzer helps you manage store products on Google (free beta).

🌍 That's Interesting: After being offered the role of voicing the Poop emoji in 2017's The Emoji Movie, Jordan Peele quit acting and pivoted to directing. And so Get Out was born. Thank you, 💩.

🌊 Next Level: Ever seen a basket star unfurl? You're welcome.

👟 Wow Site: Ian's Shoelace Site is everything you never knew you needed to know about shoelaces.