CEO and co-founder of Lelapa AI
The CEO and co-founder of Lelapa AI, a South African lab building language technology for African languages.
Pelonomi Moiloa is CEO and co-founder of Lelapa AI, a Johannesburg-based research and product lab developing language technology for African languages. She studied at the University of the Witwatersrand, double-majoring in biomedical and electrical engineering, and earned a master's degree in 2016 at Tohoku University in Japan, focusing on bioengineering and AI. After returning to South Africa she worked as a data scientist for a bank, and she met her future Lelapa AI co-founders at the 2017 Deep Learning Indaba.
Lelapa means "home" in Sotho and Tswana. Its first major project, Vulavula, applies natural language processing to African languages such as Zulu, Sotho and Afrikaans, aimed at call-centre and text-based customer service tools. TIME named her to its inaugural 2023 list of the 100 most influential people in AI, and she has also received a Bloomberg Catalyst recognition (2023) and the Mozilla Rise25 Award (2024). She says Africans should shape the narrative around technology.
Co-founded Lelapa AI, a socially grounded lab building language technology for African languages, and leads it as CEO.
Lelapa AI's first major project, Vulavula, applies natural language processing to African languages such as Zulu, Sotho and Afrikaans for customer service tools.
Named in TIME's inaugural list of the 100 most influential people in AI in 2023, in the Innovators category.
Received the Mozilla Rise25 Award in 2024.