Lelapa AI's Ambitious Growth Plan | ITWeb Tech Headlines | 31 Aug – 5 Sept 2026
These are the stories making headlines on ITWeb this week. South African AI start-up Lelapa AI is expanding its Vulavula platform with text-to-speech capabilities and new languages beyond Africa, as it builds efficient AI models tailored for African languages. Meanwhile, Discovery Bank posted its first full year of profit, with normalised operating profit of R370 million and client numbers growing 26% to 1.57 million, as it leans on AI to power its new "super bank" strategy.
The local AI start-up looks to expand its language base outside of Africa, says co-founder Pelonomi Moiloa.
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Pelonomi Moiloa, CEO and co-founder of SA start-up Lelapa AI, says they are building AI solutions that are efficient and relevant for the African context, with plans to expand language support and grow revenue to sustain their mission.
Professor Vukosi Marivate bestowed a National Order for his excellent contributions to artificial intelligence and computer science.
Support for 13 African languages aims to make AI-powered search more accessible to millions of African users.
The University of Pretoria professor and Lelapa AI founding member joins the UN’s Independent International Scientific Panel on AI.
Even as global companies cut workers because of the growing use of AI, Altron expects to create jobs as a result of this technology.
Altron becomes the latest company to launch an AI factory in the country, following similar announcements from Cassava and Dell.
The artificial intelligence research and product lab and its collaborators unveil the Esethu Framework, dedicated to AI ethics and inclusion.
Several key AI trends are on the horizon, including adoption of small language models and the use of AI agents, says Microsoft.
The entrepreneur’s Suppple develops an AI-powered conversational search engine, to meet Africa’s diverse linguistic landscape.
GenAI acceleration creates the need for inclusive artificial intelligence like never before, say SA’s AI community experts.
Start-up Lelapa AI introduces InkubaLM, a large language model trained from scratch using 1.9 billion tokens of data for five widely-spoken African languages.
Despite subdued global start-up funding this year, generative AI start-ups attracted the lion’s share of venture capital.