Africa’s creative sector just received a significant financial boost. According to its website, Helios Investment Partners is a private equity firm that has been focused on investing in Africa since 2004. It was founded by Tope Lawani, a Harvard Law and Business School graduate who serves as its managing partner, per LinkedIn. Bloomberg reports it is currently targeting sports, entertainment, and media opportunities on the continent. In 2021, it established Helios Sports & Entertainment Group (HSEG) to help provide infrastructure for such opportunities, including investing in NBA Africa, Shoppe Black reports. The outlet shares that the African sports economy will reach $20 billion by 2035. Portfolio Helios Sports & Entertainment Group’s portfolio includes a $26 million development in partnership with Zaria Group (co-founded by Toronto Raptors president Masai Ujiri). The hospitality and development company has a project in Kigali, Rwanda, that has amenities such as a boutique hotel,...

Slauson & Co. serves as a bridge between Silicon Valley and entrepreneurs seeking investors. Based in Los Angeles, this venture capital firm takes pride in investing in “exceptional entrepreneurs” who historically have been excluded, as mentioned on the “Black Tech Green Money” podcast hosted by AFROTECH™ Brand Manager Will Lucas. Its founders, Ajay Relan and Austin Clements, established the firm in 2020, after having met 25 years ago off of Slauson Avenue. “When we were building it, we could confidently say we’re the only institutional grade VC firm on Slauson Avenue,” Relan explained on the podcast. “…I think when we think about this geography and what inspires us the most, it really is communities like the ones that exist alongside this corridor in every major city and municipality across the U.S. And we’re built to build a brand that kind of speaks to folks that have historically been excluded and, again, try to find the best and brightest of those that leverage their...

Building on the work she did at six previous funds, Himalaya Rao-Potlapally is now leading one with a focus on Black entrepreneurship. Black Founders Matter Fund Founded in 2019, the Black Founders Matter Fund is an early-stage venture capital firm dedicated to investing in Black and diverse founders building solutions across a variety of sectors, including health, wealth, and economic mobility. The fund gained traction one year later following the racial justice movement caused by the murder of George Floyd. At the time, the Black Founders Matter Fund invested in A Kids Company About (founded by Jelani Memory), which launched a series of books co-authored by experts to help children navigate challenging topics such as autism, trauma, and racism. “It was a really cool business model, a really cool impactful model, and so we had invested in them. And then post-George Floyd’s murder, that book [“A Kids Book About Racism”] actually took off as one of the things that people were...

When Jo Opot was just 13 years old, she spent her school holidays managing her family’s small roadside food shack in Nairobi, Kenya. She’d start her days before sunrise cleaning vegetables and end them late, balancing the books and paying workers. “I have never worked so hard and earned so little,” she said in an interview with AFROTECH™. Those early days taught her about grit, resilience, and the struggles that small business owners face, especially women trying to make ends meet with limited support. Fast forward to today, and Opot is Founding Director of Gather Ventures, an impact fund with a mission close to her heart: investing in “ventures that both create climate resilience and drive asset creation for women and girls across Africa.” With a background that spans the United Nations, social innovation fellowships, and roles at TerraCycle and Acumen, she’s combining global experience with deep local understanding to make a difference. Why Climate Action And Women’s Empowerment...

What Black Tech Leaders Earning Millions Do Differently With Wealth And Influence The Seven-Figure Problem – Less than 0.1% of Black professionals reach a seven-figure net worth before 40. But tech is creating more Black millionaires than any industry in history. The problem isn’t making money; it’s keeping it. You’ve crossed that threshold. Startup exit, stock options, VP-level comp . You’ve joined an exclusive club that changes everything for your family. But here’s what nobody tells you: earning millions and building wealth are different games entirely. The shock of sudden wealth (what experts call sudden wealth syndrome) can disrupt even the most logical thinkers if they don’t have systems in place. The technical skills that made you successful operate on logic. Wealth operates on relationships, timing, and access to information that isn’t public. You can scale a product to millions of users, but you can’t scale personal wealth the same way. Why Your Financial Advisor Is Failing...

A woman-owned trading finance platform is now positioned to scale its footprint in Africa. Liquify Established in 2023 by Nadya Yaremenko and Alberta Asafo-Asamoah, the Ghanaian company is the “f irst fully digital trade finance platform on the continent,” its website mentions. It exists to connect small and medium-sized enterprises in Africa with capital markets across the globe. The Condia reports that the platform allows exporters to turn unpaid invoices into cash in the same day while investors can tap into a high-yielding asset class with the added perks of short maturities and low market correlation. What’s more, Liquify has integrated AI into its due diligence process to create more competitive rates for exporters selling to investment-grade buyers along with lower operational costs. “We built Liquify to unlock the $120 billion trade-finance gap holding back Africa’s most dynamic SMEs,” Yaremenko (CEO) said, according to The Condia. $1.5M Raise Liquify has already financed $4...

As college athletes begin profiting earlier in their careers, they’re also making smarter decisions sooner. Many college athletes have been able to directly profit from their name, image, and likeness (NIL) after NCAA members approved an interim policy in 2021. All three NCAA divisions suspended NIL restrictions for incoming and current student-athletes, AFROTECH™ reported; this includes VJ Edgecombe, a 2025 NBA first-round draft pick, who earned $1.4 million in NIL deals thanks to partnerships with Panini America and PSD Underwear. The top college basketball earner is AJ Dybantsa, who has a $4.1 million NIL valuation while representing the Brigham Young University (BYU) Cougars, AFROTECH™ previously reported. College athletes aren’t just pocketing earnings for short-term gain; they’re thinking long-term and making strategic financial moves well before going pro. Quarterbacks LaNorris Sellers (University of South Carolina) and Kevin Jennings (Southern Methodist University) recently...

This self-taught programmer has secured funding for his newly established startup. According to TechCrunch, Bereket Engida had an idea while living in Ethiopia to create a startup that would resolve issues he experienced around authentication. As a programmer, he created a platform that helped developers observe user behavior on their websites while he was working at remote software jobs. This took him down a new rabbit hole after he noticed frequent issues around authentication. He also did not have great faith in some of the tools that already existed to handle the process, which prompted him to take matters into his own hands. “I remember needing an organization feature. It’s a very common use case for most SaaS applications, but it wasn’t available from these providers,” Engida told TechCrunch. “So I had to build it from scratch. It took me about two weeks, and I remember thinking, ‘This is crazy; there has to be a better way to solve this.’” Better Auth This idea eventually...

What do sports and fintech have in common? For Kyle Rowley, it’s all about endurance, focus, and flawless execution. Born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago, the former basketball player once played for Northwestern University and St. Mary’s Gaels before going professional with Spain and Sweden. Now retired, Rowley is the founder of Ankor, a Sweden-based startup that, according to his recent post on LinkedIn, raised $1.3 million to solve one of e-commerce’s biggest pain points: manual reconciliation. In the post, Rowley reflected on the journey. “Today, I’m incredibly proud to say we’re launching something we built for an ecosystem I’ve genuinely come to love,” he shared. “For the past year, our team has been heads-down, rebuilding our entire platform, Ankor, from scratch.” What Is Ankor? Ankor automates the manual, time-consuming process of financial reconciliation by handling tasks such as matching purchase orders to invoices, flagging payment discrepancies, and syncing data across...

What happens when TikTok energy collides with food delivery? You get BiteSight — a new, Black-owned app rising fast in the Apple App Store rankings. It all started with a viral trend: a sister playfully “bullying” TikTok into supporting her brother’s startup. The internet listened — and now, BiteSight is taking off. As of June 24, 2025, the app holds a rating of 4.9 stars out of 5 from over 1,200 reviews. @realeater.flou It’s called BiteSight and it’s really fun I promise 🙂 #foodelivery #nyc #founder ♬ original sound – Lucious ~ Building BiteSight🍔 “I built this because I wanted to see all of my friends’ favorite food delivery spots,” founder Lucious shared. “Now, I can, like, go to their profile, see the places they like and what they rated them… and everything you see, you can get it delivered in like 15 minutes. It’s really cool.” On BiteSight, users scroll through short videos and photos from some of the best real spots in New York City, according to its description on the App...

Editorial Note: Opinions and thoughts are the author’s own and not those of AFROTECH™. Venture Capital , the lifeblood of startups, is undergoing a transition that may decrease the number of Black venture capitalists and venture-backed founders while reducing diversity in the types of ideas that Silicon Valley takes seriously. Historically, venture capital was viewed as niche, unlike other areas of finance. However, venture capital has grown into a global industry that has helped usher in our technological future. Companies like Uber and Airbnb have raised venture capital to build and grow their businesses into the household names they are today. Since 2021, the world of startups and venture capital has been going through a watershed moment that may alter the future of the industry. As AFROTECH™ previously reported, interest rates heavily impact how the startup ecosystem operates. Ever since the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022, interest rates have been hiked globally to combat...

Salt Lake City, UT-based Holladay Bank & Trust — located in a community with a Black population of less than 3% — is now Redemption Bank, following its acquisition by Redemption Holding Co. (RHC). Initially announced in 2023, the deal marks the first time a Black-led investment group has owned a bank in the Western U.S., according to The Associated Press. Redemption Holding Co. Chairman and CEO Ashley D. Bell, former White House policy advisor, cited the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in 2023 for the acquisition delay. “This process has undoubtedly taken longer than any of us anticipated,” Bell said. “However, we are grateful for the diligence of the staff at the FDIC, the leadership of the (American Bankers Association), and the renewed sense of urgency from the new administration this year, all of which helped bring everything together.” Redemption Bank is now the first Black-owned bank in U.S. history in the Rocky Mountain region and the only one in the “Black-banking desert,”...

A UK-based legal tech startup has secured new funding that helps lawyers streamline their workflow with the aid of AI. Definely Co-founded in 2017 by CEO Nnamdi Emelifeonwu and Chief Strategy Officer Feargus MacDaeid, Definely offers AI solutions geared toward lawyers, allowing them to create, draft, and review legal documents. The company was named one of the 50 fastest-growin g tech companies in the UK by Deloitte in 2023. “A Microsoft Word add-in, the Definely suite contains a suite of products that help you through the complete pre-execution stage of contract drafting with AI power. Surface precedent clauses, better understand provisions and automate hundreds of your proofreading checks,” its website describes. In a LinkedIn post, Emelifeonwu revealed the platform has more than 100 customers, including BT, IKEA, JPMorgan, DLA Piper and Shoosmiths. $30M Series B With a $30 million Series B funding round led by Revaia with participation from Alumni Ventures, Beacon VC, Clio,...

Collab Capital, which backs early-stage founders, has closed its second fund. Collab Capital’s Mission The venture capital firm was co-founded in 2019 by Jewel Burks Solomon, the former head of Google for Startups in the U.S., to advance innovation across work, health care, and infrastructure and invest in financial, human, and network capital, its LinkedIn mentions. The firm had previously raised $50 million in its first fund, which has enabled investments in 38 early-stage startups, including Goodr, a food waste startup that is launching a “first-of-its-kind” community space in Atlanta, GA. The new Goodr Community Market at Edgewood will allow 200 families to shop for free and will give $5 deli meals to kids that visit the space with books, the company noted on LinkedIn. Everything in the market is also SNAP-eligible. $75M Raise Collab Capital wants to further its investments in founders addressing “big, systemic problems,” according to TechCrunch. It has now closed its second...

Spelman College is investing in the future of learning. According to a press release shared with AFROTECH™, Zeal Capital Partners, a Washington, DC-based venture capital firm founded by Nasir Qadree, has secured new funding that will go towards opportunities in financial technology, health care, and the future of learning and work. The firm has secured $82 million for its Zeal Fund II, which brings its overall managed assets to $186 million. Investors in the round include limited partners Citi Impact Fund, M&T Bank, MassMutual, Wells Fargo, Zaffre Investments, and Spelman College. Returning investors from its previous raise include Capricorn Investment Group, Hampton University, and nearly 80% of the other investors from Zeal’s Fund I. “In a market that rewards discipline, efficiency, and resilience, the confidence of our limited partners allows us to champion bold founders who are building enduring companies,” Qadree said in the press release. “We are committed to continuing to...