When Cognito Systems started as Six Labs, it wasn’t yet clear what the company would eventually become. But what was clear was the founder’s tenacity to build technology that could compete with products from around the world without losing sight of African realities.
Moore Dagogo-Hart, CEO and founder of Cognito Systems, told Techpoint Africa that after scaling Six Labs’ product Zap Africa to over 50,000 users and over $500,000 in funding, the company realized it was the right time to expand beyond blockchain and cryptocurrency infrastructure into artificial intelligence.
“When Zap Africa gained 10,000 users in a single day in January this year, I think we knew it was time for Six Labs to change and have a new identity. We went from not really knowing what we were doing as a startup, while continuing to develop for a variety of companies, to building a product with lots of users and a better understanding of scale and systems,” Dagogo-Hart recalls.
With this, Cognito Systems was born as an infrastructure company building artificial intelligence and blockchain systems for business, with a clear ambition to ensure that Africa is not left behind in the global intelligence race.
From Goldman Sachs to the founders
Dagogohart’s path to becoming a founder began with his departure from Goldman Sachs in 2021. He was sure he wanted to build something in the crypto space, but wasn’t sure what that would look like, which led him on a journey of experimentation.
His first venture was Solarsoft, a startup that launched Nebula Wallet, an NFT and cryptocurrency wallet. However, things did not go as planned. Apple removed Nebula from the App Store, and shortly thereafter, in 2022, the crypto market crashed. Dagogo-Hart decided to shut down Nebula and shut down Solarsoft completely.
Still, he had no choice but to return to Goldman Sachs or take another job. So when Moore had the opportunity to build a cryptocurrency exchange, Zapp Africa, with his co-founders, he took it.
This decision led to the creation of Six Labs, a company that would build the underlying infrastructure for Zap Africa. Six Labs later evolved into Cognito Systems.
What Cognito Systems does
Cognito Systems builds AI and blockchain systems that help businesses run efficiently.
“Cognito Systems is an artificial intelligence and blockchain systems company. We basically build AI and blockchain infrastructure and systems that help businesses improve,” Dagogo-Hart explains.
This means building software that automates time-consuming or inefficient business processes. On the AI front, Cognito Systems is building an AI infrastructure that can be applied to multiple business teams, including customer support and finance, while blockchain infrastructure ensures security, transparency, and user control.
The company’s most prominent product to date is Martha AI, an AI-powered customer support system designed to help businesses respond to customers faster and at scale.
“Martha AI speaks to customers and responds in seconds, essentially relieving the burden on customer support teams.
Why Martha AI was Cognito’s first product
Cognito Systems’ first internal products came from two places: client work and internal pain points.
After the rebrand, Cognito Systems won contracts including building a calling platform for a Canadian non-profit. But while working on that project, the team realized they could build something bigger.
“Because of all the customer support issues Zap Africa had, we were able to build a complete customer support platform instead of just a phone calling platform.”
So they built Martha AI to automate customer service, manage tickets, and respond to customers in seconds.
Martha AI automates customer service, allowing support teams to handle conversations and manage tickets while freeing them from repetitive responses so they can focus on more strategic customer support tasks.
Cognito Systems Edge
As AI becomes increasingly integrated into daily operations, Cognito Systems primarily targets early-stage startups that are still figuring out how to operate at scale.
The company is not limited to one sector. The company’s target customers span fintech, real estate tech, edtech, and health tech.
Dagogo-Hart believes the biggest advantage of Cognito Systems is how quickly Martha AI can be deployed, its localization, and its ability to simulate human interaction.
“Martha AI is the first customer support chatbot that can be integrated in 60 seconds.”
The tool is trained on internet data and real customer support conversations from Zap Africa, providing context on how customer support should work and the questions customers often ask.
The system is designed to understand local language and context better than most Western models.
“We use local models like YarnGPT, which help us interpret local languages more clearly and accurately than ChatGPT, Claude, and all the other Western models.”
The future built with Cognito Systems
For Dagogo-Hart, Cognito Systems is ultimately about ensuring Africa is not left behind in the AI era.
“The main reason for building Cognito is to basically bring Africa into this new era of intelligence.”
Martha AI is just the beginning. The long-term plan is for AI to impact every part of business.
“We want Martha AI to help developers, finance teams, and legal teams. Any business unit can be greatly enhanced by artificial intelligence.”
Cognito Systems wants to be one of the companies leading the transition to building intelligence systems in and from Africa.
