South African startup Verascient has raised ZAR19.5 million (US$1.2 million) in funding to help companies build faster and more capable teams using AI.
Founded by Keagan Stokoe and Emile Ferreira, the Cape Town-based Verascient delivers the operating system and expertise companies need to successfully leverage the best of AI.
The startup turns knowledge scattered across documents, systems and individuals into shared organisational context, then builds the workflows and agents that allow teams to use it in their day-to-day work.
Verascient’s oversubscribed ZAR19.5 million round was backed by Founder Collective, Andrena Ventures, Cambridge Enterprise and Summit Ventures, with participation from Alan Knott-Craig, Shayne Mann and other select angel investors.
“At the centre of Verascient’s technology is a temporal knowledge graph designed to build and maintain a comprehensive understanding of an organisation, ensuring that information that was once scattered quickly becomes securely available to AI agents while preserving the history, permissions and provenance behind the information,” said Ferreira.
“There is a significant difference between giving employees access to an AI tool, and building a company that can operate intelligently with AI. Verascient bridges that gap by working directly with businesses to understand how their people and processes operate, and providing the secure infrastructure that enables AI agents to understand the organisation, work within its existing systems and access controls, and deliver valuable results.”
Stokoe said the raise would enable the startup to build a “small, exceptional team of engineers and AI builders”.
“We are looking for high-agency people with the curiosity, technical depth and ambition to build something meaningful to solve real-world problems. We’re looking for the top one per cent of AI talent, who are excited to take genuine ownership with the freedom to do the best work of their lives,” he said.
