Yamify enables freelancers, startups and web agencies to deploy GPU-powered AI tools from local African data centers in under one minute.

Yamify team with participants at the n8n AI Agent Workshop, Orange Digital Center DRC — fostering hands-on AI innovation in Africa.
Agent Workshop, Orange Digital Center DRC — fostering hands-on AI innovation in Africa.

Yamify, the developer-first AI platform that lets freelancers, startups, and web agencies spin up AI stacks in under a minute, today announced it is raising a $200,000 pre-seed round, with $100,000 already committed from Felix Anane, an early backer of Paystack.

Founded by Luc Okalobé, a former Silicon Valley engineer who worked at IBM, TikTok, Anaplan, Salesforce and Heroku, Yamify offers one-click deployment of AI-ready environments like n8n and AI-powered WordPress on GPU-powered clusters (YAMs). The clusters are hosted in local data centers, providing high performance, low latency, and data residency compliance. The company is part of Google for Startups and the Itana Free AI Zone in Nigeria.

Yamify joins a growing wave of African AI startups such as Cerebrium (YCombinator 2022), which recently raised $8.5 million in seed funding to build foundational AI infrastructure for large-scale model training and optimization tailored to the continent. While Cerebrium focuses on scalable AI model training platforms, Yamify is pioneering a developer-first, community-led approach with GPU-powered AI deployments from local data centers, leveraging open standards like Kubernetes and open-source tools, combined with local billing solutions – enabling freelancers, early startups, and web agencies to launch AI agents and workflows in seconds with low latency, high performance, compliance, and local billing transparency.

Yamify entered private beta in July 2025 and has already secured early traction with developers, fintechs and web agencies across Lagos, Kinshasa, Brazzaville, and Johannesburg. It now has over 1500 developers and startups on its waitlist – including teams from Vaultpay.io (YCombinator 2023).

The funds will be used to launch its Model Context Protocol (MCP), enabling users to go from idea to functional AI prototypes rapidly, inspired by platforms like Lovable. Yamify also plans to deploy forward engineers directly into customer organizations to accelerate AI adoption.

“Africa should not wait to be included in the AI wave – we should build it. At Yamify, we believe in community-led AI infrastructure made for Africa and the world,” says Luc Okalobé, founder of Yamify.

Yamify is community-led, organizing hackathons, workshops, and supporting local developer ecosystems. The startup is currently open to meetings with investors interested in AI infrastructure for emerging markets.

About Yamify

Yamify is the Heroku for AI tools, built for emerging markets. Founded by Luc Okalobé, an ex-IBM/TikTok, and ex-Salesforce/Heroku cloud engineer backed by the founders of DigitalOcean and OpenStack, Yamify empowers developers, startups and web agencies to deploy AI agents and workflows in seconds, hosted in local data centers for performance, compliance, and data sovereignty. The company was founded in 2025 and is based in San Francisco, Lagos, Johannesburg, Kinshassa (DR Congo), Brazzaville (R Congo).

Media Contact

Luc Okalobé

Founder & CEO, Yamify

https://www.linkedin.com/company/yamify

YAMIFY — “Heroku for AI in Africa”

Contact: Luc Okalobé | press@yamify.co | +1 415 609 2306

Yamify – www.yamify.co

Dateline: San Francisco, Lagos, Johannesburg, Kinshasa, Brazzaville