Editor’s note: African-Startups is a sister publication of EU-Startups, bringing trusted coverage of startups, venture capital, and innovation across Africa.
Kenya is leading in startup funding in East Africa, with recent investments spanning in various sectors from FinTech, eco-friendly AgTech, to electric mobility and insurance.
Kenyan startups raised about $126 million across H1 2026, a 4.1% dip from the same period a year earlier and the country’s weakest first-half haul since 2021.
The slowdown pushed Kenya into third place among Africa’s “Big Four” startup funding destinations, behind Egypt ($327 million) and Nigeria ($254 million), with South Africa fourth at $83 million, says the report.
The gap looks even wider on equity-only terms: Kenyan startups attracted just $46 million in equity in H1, compared with $214 million for Nigeria and $183 million for Egypt. Africa as a whole pulled in $1.36 billion across the half, slightly below the $1.44 billion recorded in H1 2025.
Kenyan startups raised a record $984 million in 2025, surpassing other African markets. While investors still have funds to invest, they are now focusing more on startups that can show they will be profitable.
In Q3, several Kenyan companies attracted capital from pan-African funds, European development finance institutions and others in the form of debt, structured working-capital facilities and receivables-based financing, as founders look to scale without diluting equity in a market.
Having said that, here are the Kenyan startups that closed funding rounds in Q3 2026.
Cloud9
Fund raised in Q3 2026: Around $500k from Alliance
Cloud9 is a FinTech offering digital banking and cross-border payments to African consumers and businesses, built on stablecoin rails. Users get a single phone-based account to hold Kenyan shillings, US dollars, euros, pounds and yuan, pay suppliers in more than 100 countries within minutes, receive payments from overseas clients through dedicated virtual accounts, and cash out mobile money. Businesses can run payroll, bulk payments and team approvals from one dashboard, while Cloud9 Wealth offers savings vaults and access to global stock markets. The company went live in early 2026, has since passed 25,000 accounts and says transaction volume is growing by more than 15% week over week.
Farm to Feed
Fund raised in Q3, 2026: $171k from Proparco
Farm to Feed is an AgTech platform covering sourcing, demand forecasting, sales, logistics, warehousing and payments to help smallholder farmers sell more of their harvest and lose less of it. The company purchases entire harvests, including imperfect or surplus produce, and sells lower-grade crops through its “Grade Rescue” and “Ready to Use” lines in local and international markets. It has 5,500 registered farmers, 160+ business customers (hotels, schools, hospitals, food processors and institutional feeding programmes), a Net Promoter Score of 92, and has grown by more than 100% year on year for three consecutive years, with its 2025 impact report citing a 249% rise in farmer income and an 81% drop in on-farm food loss.
HustleSasa
Funding raised in Q3 2026: Undisclosed amount in a round led by African impact investor Impacc
HustleSasa is a Nairobi-based creator-commerce platform. It was founded at the Antler Accelerator in Nairobi, with a team focused on uplifting African creators by improving their financial opportunities. The company gives event creators unique storefront URLs to sell directly to their audiences and leverage their brand. It has grown into a comprehensive system that supports live entertainment and sports in Africa, serving over 4,000 clients in six countries. It handles various industry aspects, including digital ticketing and events like ANZA MMA and Celebrity Fight Nights. In 2025, the platform sold over 521,000 tickets and provided financial services to creators.
Velocity
Funding raised in Q3 2026: Undisclosed investment from Africa Jobs Fund
Velocity is a labour mobility startup that trains African nurses in German and places them in jobs at German hospitals. The company teaches qualified nurses German to the B2 proficiency level required by German employers and regulators, then works with placement partners to match graduates with hospital jobs. Its German classes are delivered fully online by Kenyan nurses already working in Germany, using a language-learning app Velocity built for its learners, and typically take about ten months of part-time study to complete. The company has more than 300 active learners and a waitlist exceeding 2,500, and every candidate who has reached the interview stage with an employer has been placed.
OKOA Energy
Funding raised in Q3, 2026: Undisclosed funding from Catalyst Fund
OKOA Energy was built on a single conviction: that the electric mobility revolution would only succeed if its underlying infrastructure was interoperable, scalable, and data-driven from day one. The company builds and operates battery swapping networks for e-motorcycles and tuk-tuks, and has developed a complete software stack to manage them in real time across countries. Having already managed over 200,000 battery swaps across four markets, it is now launching its interoperable swap network in Tanzania, Cameroon, and Zambia.
Orient Enterprises
Fund raised in Q3 2026: $1 million blended investment
Orient Enterprises buys macadamia nuts from over 5,000 smallholder farmers, processes them at its own FSSC 22000-certified facility in Juja, Kiambu County, and exports raw, roasted and flavoured kernels under its Orient Chef brand to Europe, North America and Asia. The company also runs its own tree nursery, supplying seedlings to local farmers. Revenue hit $1.2 million in 2025, with more than 120 employees, 80% of them women. By 2030, the partnership targets more than 275,000 trees planted and over 100 new jobs created.
Flowt
Fund raised in Q3 2026: Undisclosed pre-Seed
Flowt provides working capital to small businesses in green manufacturing, climate-smart agriculture, renewable energy, and clean cooking. These companies make real revenue but often lack the financial documents that banks require. Its platform plugs into accounting software and analyses banking and mobile money data to help lenders assess borrowers. Flowt has already tested with more than 15 potential borrowers and identified $1–2 million in pre-qualified loan demand. The first close was backed by impact investor Impacc and Delta40 Venture Studio, with grant funding from Argidius Foundation.
Kyosk
Fund raised in Q3 2026: Undisclosed from Jobtech Alliance
Kyosk is a B2B commerce platform that serves over 200,000 informal retailers across Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, and Tanzania, handling inventory access, delivery, and repeat ordering for small shopkeepers. The company recently shifted from running 25 warehouses in Kenya to one per country, focusing on route-level economics and operational efficiency. The investment came from the Jobtech Alliance, which backed Kyosk as part of its microenterprise thesis around platforms that work inside the daily workflows of informal retailers.
SunCulture
Fund raised in Q3 2026: $10 million securitisation
SunCulture designs, manufactures and finances solar-powered irrigation systems for smallholder farmers through a “pay-as-you-grow” model that bundles in insurance and warranty services. The company has sold more than 85,000 solar irrigation systems and pumps to date, claims its system can increase crop yields by up to 300% and cut water use by up to 80%, and says it holds roughly half of East Africa’s solar irrigation market. By easing pressure on rainfed agriculture, which remains the norm across much of sub-Saharan Africa, SunCulture aims to help farmers build resilience against increasingly unpredictable rainfall while lifting household incomes. The securitisation will allow the company to recycle capital that had been tied up financing longer-dated customer receivables, freeing resources to expand access to its solar water pumps for smallholder farmers.
Turaco
Fund raised in Q3 2026: Undisclosed from 3IF Ventures
Turaco is an embedded insurance platform providing simple, affordable microinsurance to underserved customers through partners such as ASA International, M-KOPA and Safaricom. The company has reached more than 8 million people across six African markets and is expanding into Asia with a launch in Pakistan. Turaco’s model rests on three pillars: distribution through embedded partners such as ASA International, M-KOPA and Safaricom PLC, proprietary underwriting and claims technology, and a focus on affordable microinsurance for low-income households.
ARC Ride
Fund raised in Q3 2026: $33.3 million equity and debt
ARC Ride operates a battery-as-a-service (BaaS) model that allows riders to use electric motorcycles without purchasing batteries outright, swapping depleted ones at the company’s network of smart battery-swapping stations instead. The company’s model combines electric motorcycles with a network of battery-swapping stations, allowing riders to replace depleted batteries rather than waiting for vehicles to recharge. The company said its technology and infrastructure are designed to make electric mobility more accessible, affordable and practical than petrol-powered alternatives. The company has already launched in South Africa following a pilot in Cape Town, with a vehicle rollout underway in Gauteng. It also plans to expand its battery-swapping network and add 5,000 electric motorcycles to its fleet. In Kenya, ARC Ride will continue expanding across Nairobi and the western region.
Unmarkets
Fund raised in Q3 2026: Undisclosed from Small Foundation
Unmarkets is a Nairobi-based venture builder that partners with established African-owned agricultural companies to co-create new food and agriculture businesses in Kenya. Rather than helping founders build from scratch, Unmarkets teams up with companies that already have production facilities, brands, supplier relationships and customers, provides capital alongside the partner’s own equity, and leads the design of the new business, including recruiting management teams and developing brands and products for regional and global markets. The company invests through a $12 million capital vehicle backed by Shell Foundation and values-aligned family offices, with a portfolio aimed at improving incomes and climate resilience for 200,000 smallholder farmers. Dublin-based Small Foundation’s investment, which builds on a 2024 grant that helped refine the model, will fund the launch of four new ventures, taking them from design into trading.
Satlyt
Fund raised in Q3 2026: $8 million Seed
Satlyt is a SpaceTech startup that creates software allowing AI models to run on satellites already in orbit. This lets multiple spacecraft work together on big computing tasks without needing hardware changes. They can update the software over the air, which can reduce the amount of data sent back to Earth by up to 85%. The company has successfully tested its software on demonstration missions. Earlier this year, it deployed Google DeepMind’s Gemma AI model on a spacecraft from Momentus, significantly reducing the size of onboard software errors by over 60%. Their software is set to launch on a SpaceX rocket with a satellite made by Indian startup TakeMe2Space, in collaboration with NASA and space-surveillance company Stellerian.
Sevi
Fund raised in Q3 2026: Undisclosed from Oxano Capital
Sevi runs an “Order Now, Pay Later” platform that sits between suppliers and retailers. Retailers can stock inventory without putting up collateral, and suppliers get paid immediately. The company holds a Central Bank of Kenya digital credit licence, making it one of the country’s first licensed digital credit providers, and runs automated credit scoring and KYC systems that Oxano says have produced consistently low default rates. Sevi has more than 7,000 retailers and 40+ suppliers on its platform, 55% of them women micro-entrepreneurs, and has disbursed over $7.7 million in credit to date.
Lemonade Payments
Fund raised in July 2026: Undisclosed from Plug and Play Ventures
Lemonade Payments lets people send, receive, and manage money without exposing their personal details during transactions. For businesses, the company offers a white-label solution that collects customer payments without handling sensitive data directly, and it also serves partners and growth agents through revenue-sharing arrangements with real-time payout tracking. Both founders came out of banking and financial services, where they say they saw how exposed personal data left users vulnerable to fraud and unwanted contact.
Watu
Fund raised in Q3 2026: $7 million debt facility
Watu is a pan-African and Latin American asset-financing company that provides credit for motorcycles, three-wheelers and smartphones, assets the company says are used to generate income and stay digitally connected. It finances motorcycles and three-wheelers through its core mobility business and smartphones through a dedicated unit, Watu Simu, and now operates in ten markets across Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, the DRC, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Mexico and Brazil. The company has originated more than 7 million loans and disbursed over $1 billion in credit, works with more than 4,000 registered dealerships, and says it maintains a 100% repayment track record across 35+ lending partners.
Fuzu
Funding in July 2026: Undisclosed from Jobtech Alliance
Fuzu has spent over ten years developing talent infrastructure in Africa. It has shifted from being a jobs marketplace to managing global teams for AI data operations and quality assurance through its Fuzu Atlas product. In the next six months, the Jobtech Alliance will collaborate with Fuzu to secure international clients, refine the Atlas offering, and transition to more valuable AI projects. The funding for this initiative comes from the Jobtech Alliance, led by Mercy Corps and BFA Global.
M-KOPA Kenya Mobility
Funding in July 2026: $30 million senior debt facility
M-KOPA Kenya Mobility is the electric motorbike financing arm of M-KOPA, the pan-African FinTech that recently crossed 10 million customers across Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa. The subsidiary was set up in 2023 to sell and finance electric two-wheelers, including the locally assembled Roam Air, the Ampersand Turaco, and Spiro battery-swapping bikes, as well as fleet solutions for platforms like Bolt. The $30 million facility came from Dutch development bank FMO, structured in three tranches: $22.5 million in direct loans and a $7.5 million commitment under FMO’s Building Prospects label. It is expected to carry 100% Green and 100% Reduced Inequalities labels under FMO’s impact framework.
