An index of frontier and emerging AI labs.
Open-source LLMs
African NLP lab building small language models for African languages — released InkubaLM covering Swahili, Yoruba, isiXhosa, Hausa, and isiZulu. Backed by Mozilla Ventures and Atlantica Ventures.
| Name | Lelapa AI |
|---|---|
| Space | Open-source LLMs |
| Founded | 2022 |
| Latest valuation | — |
| Stage | — |
| Status | active |
| HQ | Johannesburg |
| Founders | Pelonomi Moiloa, Jade Abbott, Vukosi Marivate |
| Website | https://lelapa.ai |
| Careers | https://lelapa.ai/careers |
| — | |
| X / Twitter | — |
No funding events recorded.
No founders recorded yet. Submit info.
| Date | Type | Title | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-06-03 | added | Lelapa AI added to tracker | — |
No sources cited.
| Lab | Valuation | Founded |
|---|---|---|
| Nomic AI | — | 2022 |
| DeepSeek | $45B | 2023 |
| Mistral AI | ~$14B | 2023 |
| Hugging Face | $13.5B | 2016 |
| Fireworks AI | $4B | 2022 |
| Together AI | ~$3.3B | 2022 |
| Snorkel AI | ~$1.3B | 2019 |
| Upstage | ~$1.16B | 2020 |