SPACE
Kenyan-founded Satlyt raises US$8 million to run AI on satellites, but the NASA headline is mostly not cash
Satlyt writes software that runs data processing on a satellite's own computer, so the spacecraft sends back a result instead of raw files. The seed round, announced on 1 October, is US$8 million (about KES 1.04 billion), led by non sibi ventures with TLCOM, Antler, Launch Africa Ventures, Enza Capital, Slauson & Co. and Axian Investment; no valuation was given. Founder Rama Afullo is a Kenyan-American engineer who worked in Google's cloud business and briefly on Starlink at SpaceX in 2024. Satlyt owns no satellites and Tech-ish names no paying customers. Its first two in-orbit missions ran in March: a Gemma-based troubleshooting tool on a Momentus spacecraft sent a 469-byte diagnosis in place of 1,319 bytes of raw logs, about 64% less. The company has a Nairobi headquarters, a Kenyan subsidiary and a large part of its engineering team there, with a US base in Sunnyvale, and signed memorandums of understanding with the Kenya Space Agency in April 2025 and Angola's space programme office in June 2026; an MoU records intent, and no contract or budget has been announced under either. The NASA support announced in November 2025 as US$4 million is mostly staff time: the federal record shows US$179,529 committed to a research contract, and no award for the US$850,000 follow-on. The multi-satellite "virtual data centre" vision is future work, and results from the next mission, on TakeMe2Space's MOI-1a satellite, had not been published by 14 October. The article does not say how the US$8 million will be spent.
Tech-ish
AI
Gemini 4 Argon is live, and the cheapest way to use it in Kenya is KES 3,700 a month
Google's most capable model became publicly available on Tuesday 13 October in the Gemini app, AI Mode in Search, the Gemini API and Gemini for business; before that it had been limited to a group of cyber security teams. In Kenya the free tier (KES 0) and Google AI Plus (KES 900) do not include it, so the free year Google gives Kenyan university and college students, which is AI Plus, does not either. Google AI Pro at KES 3,700 does, marked as still rolling out, as do Ultra at KES 12,500 (five times Pro usage) and KES 37,000 (twenty times). Tech-ish puts KES 3,700 at about US$28.50, against US$19.99 for AI Pro in the United States. For developers, Kenya is on the supported-countries list, but Argon is on the paid API tier only, not the free tier or the Pro plan in AI Studio. Introductory prices of US$2 per million input tokens and US$10 per million output tokens last until 30 November, then double to US$4 and US$20 from 1 December. The context limit is 1,048,576 tokens, and Google's model card gives a knowledge cutoff of March 2026, so it needs web search for anything newer. A Pro subscriber may not see Argon in the model menu straight away.
Tech-ish
MOBILITY
Bolt Plus costs KSh 280 a month, and a rider has to spend KSh 5,600 to earn that back
Bolt's new membership for Kenya costs KSh 280 a month or KSh 899 a year, with a free first month and then KSh 119 a month for the next six months. Members get 5% cashback on Bolt Basic rides and 10% on eligible Premium, Comfort and Business rides, paid into the Bolt Balance for future trips rather than taken off the fare, up to KSh 200 off delivery fees on qualifying orders, priority driver matching and three free ride cancellations a month. TechMoran's sums: at KSh 280 a Basic rider must spend KSh 5,600 a month to get the fee back, or KSh 2,800 on a 10% ride, and at the introductory KSh 119 those thresholds fall to KSh 2,380 and KSh 1,190. Uber One launched in Kenya in March 2025 at the same KSh 280 a month, or KSh 2,800 a year, so Bolt's annual plan works out to about KSh 75 a month. Bolt says the cost is carried by the company and its partners and does not cut driver, rider or courier earnings. The article gives no Kenyan subscriber numbers for either service and argues the harder problem is trust, citing past safety complaints and driver disputes with Bolt; that is the author's view.
TechMoran
FINTECH
Kuunda's US$5 million is a share sale, not new money for the company
Kuunda, a lending-as-a-service platform founded in 2018 that lets banks and fintechs offer overdrafts and working-capital loans through mobile money operators, payment aggregators and point-of-sale providers, announced US$5 million to expand into seven new markets. TechMoran's report describes it as a secondary sale, in which existing shareholders sell to other investors, so the money appears to go to the sellers rather than into the business, though the article does not say so outright. E4E Africa led, with existing backers Accion Ventures, Portugal Gateway Fund and Seedstars Africa Ventures; the valuation, the sellers and each investor's amount were not disclosed. Kuunda operates in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique and Malawi, and the seven new markets are not named. It raised US$7.5 million in October 2025. The company-reported figures are more than US$4.4 billion in lending activity, more than 870 million loans and 14.6 million agents, merchants and consumers reached, with no time period or independent check. Andrew Milne is named as chief executive, and the article does not say what the money will be used for.
TechMoran
