Cape Town-based AI start-up raises R19.5m

South African AI startup Verascient has secured $1.2 million (R19.5 million) in its pre-seed funding round to assist businesses in developing more efficient and capable teams through artificial intelligence. The company aims to boost its engineering team and enhance its technology to support broader enterprise deployments. Verascient transforms knowledge scattered across documents, systems, and individuals into a unified organizational context, enabling teams to utilize it in their day-to-day operations.

The oversubscribed round was led by Founder Collective, Andrena Ventures, Cambridge Enterprise, and Summit Ventures, with participation from notable angel investors Alan Knott-Craig and Shayne Mann. Founded by Emile Ferreira and Keagan Stokoe, Verascient specializes in working within companies where its proprietary AI infrastructure improves operational efficiency.

The temporal knowledge graph at the core of their technology maps and maintains a comprehensive understanding of an organization, ensuring information that was previously scattered becomes securely accessible to AI agents while preserving the historical context, permissions, and provenance of the data. Verascient believes the lack of organized knowledge is a significant obstacle for businesses in realizing the full potential of AI.

The startup's goal is to bridge this gap by collaborating closely with businesses to understand their operations and providing the necessary secure infrastructure for AI agents to comprehend the organization and access its systems and controls.