A 24-year-old Swedish-South African entrepreneur has built an artificial intelligence platform designed to make South Africa’s tender system more transparent and competitive, arguing that wider visibility of tender opportunities could help curb corruption by ensuring more legitimate bidders participate.
Lars Gumede, founder of Axel Technologies, launched NowNow in January 2025 as an AI assistant for South African business owners. Its flagship feature, Tender Finder, automates the process of locating and applying for government tenders — a process Gumede describes as deeply flawed.
“If you’re trying to find tenders now, you use the government’s eTenders website, or you monitor individual sites for tenders that aren’t on the eTenders website,” Gumede said. “It’s an awful experience. There are thousands of new tenders being published every week. The website isn’t great. There isn’t a great way of finding tenders.”
He said one of the system’s core problems is that many tenders go under the radar — sometimes deliberately — giving insiders an advantage. “If we can just get people who are honestly participating to see as much as possible, then hopefully more people will bid, and the system becomes more competitive,” Gumede said. “We can hopefully deal with tender corruption in that way.”
Tender Finder uses AI to sift through tender invitations and present relevant opportunities based on a company’s area of work. A civil engineering firm specializing in roadworks, for example, could quickly find tenders for road and infrastructure projects. Gumede said the plan is to expand the tool’s capabilities so it can automatically complete and submit tender application forms on behalf of companies.
NowNow’s broader suite of tools includes a receipt manager, invoice creator, load-shedding tracker, email summaries and a compliance center. Features in development include automated South African Revenue Service filing, cybersecurity monitoring and an AI-powered social media manager.
Gumede was born in Halmstad, Sweden, before his family moved to the United Kingdom and then South Africa. He attended St John’s College in Johannesburg before studying actuarial science at the University of Cape Town, where he also took computer science electives and taught himself programming before his first year of university. He graduated with a Bachelor of Business Science in actuarial science in 2024 and launched Axel Technologies in January 2025.
