Verascient raises $1.2 million pre-seed led by Founder Collective

Verascient has raised $1.2 million, about R19.5 million, in an oversubscribed pre-seed round led by Founder Collective. Launchbase Africa reported on 24 August that Andrena Ventures, Cambridge Enterprise and Summit Ventures also took part, along with angel investors Alan Knott-Craig and Shayne Mann.

What Verascient builds

The Cape Town company is building an AI operating system for AI-native businesses. It uses a temporal knowledge graph to capture an organisation's workflows, history and institutional knowledge, then makes that context available to AI agents that communicate, flag action items and carry out tasks. It is initially targeting financial services, insurance and logistics.

Team and traction

Keagan Stokoe is CEO and co-founder, and Emile Ferreira is CTO and co-founder. The company has more than 1,000 integrations with existing business systems. It pivoted from an earlier hallucination detection product that proved unsellable, and it now places AI engineers alongside customers. Stokoe said: "That's why our model combines infrastructure with engineers working directly alongside our customers."

Investors and use of funds

Founder Collective is an early backer of Uber, Airtable and Whoop. Andrena Ventures is led by Gideon Valkin, a former Commercial Director at Monzo, and Cambridge Enterprise is the University of Cambridge's investment arm. The money will expand the engineering team, deepen the technology and support more enterprise deployments.

At a glance

• Company: Verascient
• Raised: $1.2 million (R19.5 million)
• Round: Pre-seed, oversubscribed
• Investors: Founder Collective (lead), Andrena Ventures, Cambridge Enterprise, Summit Ventures
• Based in: Cape Town, South Africa
• Markets: Financial services, insurance and logistics
• Key figure: More than 1,000 integrations