The company has grown to 105 employees, at least five of whom have PhD degrees.
“We are looking for venture capital assets that are already revenue-producing. Spatialedge has already proven that the business model works, but now they need funding to grow. That growth could be into the rest of the country or ideally into new and international markets as well. “We are looking at tech-enabled growth businesses for investments and that’s quite a broad ambit, but AI is one of the more exciting sectors,” he said.“You have everything from AI being used to create new graphics and to create silly pictures at a consumer level to AI being able to process vast amounts of information and provide really useful corporate insights. That’s far harder to do and that’s what excited us about Spatialedge, they are a team of problem solvers,” he said.
Spatialedge is growing revenue and employees at a rate of approximately 40% a year. “With this investment, our focus will be mainly South Africa. Our next investment round will be focused on international expansion and expanding the product range and industry focus,” Gerber said.The SA Generative AI study released by World Wide Worx this week shows that the key factors for successful AI deployment include strategy, cybersecurity, budget, culture and data analysis skills.
Goldstuck said it was fascinating that only 10% of respondents were not using generative AI in some way, particularly given the relative newness of GenAI, which “exploded into the public consciousness around 2022”.