Ethiopian AI startup Hasab AI has been selected for the inaugural Askya AI Growth Platform, one of 11 companies chosen from more than 1,250 applicants across 38 African countries. It is the only Ethiopian company in the cohort.
The selection marks another step in Hasab’s evolution from a speech-recognition startup into a provider of voice AI infrastructure for enterprises, banks, telecom operators and government institutions.
Askya Investment Partners, whose founding partners were early backers of Moniepoint and Jumia, announced the cohort on November 2. Startups join the eight-week program, which runs to December 18, without giving up equity. Hasab founder and CEO Kidus Yared told Shega that each startup may then receive an equity investment of up to $500,000 from Askya, with the firm’s full backing.
The program also provides coaching, access to AI talent, cloud and computing infrastructure, and introductions to enterprise customers. According to Askya, all 11 companies already have enterprise deployments.
Hasab builds its own speech-recognition and speech-synthesis models for Amharic and Afaan Oromo. It also builds AI agents that handle enterprise calls for banks, telecom operators and government.
The selection builds on milestones Shega has previously reported. When Hasab officially launched in May 2025, it reported 97 percent accuracy in Amharic speech recognition, with models trained on more than 1,000 hours of audio. Its early enterprise subscribers included ride-hailing company Little Ethiopia and call center provider Ring Cloud.
By December 2025, the company had expanded into AI-powered meeting transcription and summarization in Amharic, Afaan Oromo and English, and reported about 10,000 users. Organizations using its tools included Globe Dock Academy, GoodayOn and Ring Cloud.
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