South African artificial intelligence startup Locstat has raised €2.5 million, about $2.3 million, in pre-Series A funding to accelerate expansion in the United Kingdom and European Union. The round is led by Portugal Gateway Fund with participation from ANZA Capital. The company plans to use the capital to scale go-to-market, deepen partnerships, and continue building its presence across Africa as a strategic growth region.
Company Overview
Founded in 2016, Locstat develops a graph powered AI and complex event processing platform built to interpret big, fast, connected data. The software continuously analyzes and visualizes real time and static data from multiple sources to surface high value insights. Its design targets enterprises that need to link disparate signals quickly and translate those relationships into operational decisions.
Technology and Use Cases
Locstat’s graph approach maps entities and relationships to enrich datasets for downstream analytics, improving the context that models and rules can see. The platform supports fraud detection, anti-money laundering workflows, customer journey mapping, and rules engine and geo-spatial analytics. All of these functions are delivered in real time to help teams identify risks sooner and act with clearer situational awareness.
Funding Details
The €2.5 million pre-Series A brings fresh resources to product and commercial execution without changing the company’s focus on regulated industries. Portugal Gateway Fund is the lead investor, with ANZA Capital joining the round to support international scaling. Investors indicated expectations for disciplined growth in Europe and a path toward a full Series A over the next two years.
Expansion Strategy
Having established product market fit in African financial services, Locstat is now prioritizing brand building, revenue generation, and partner development in the UK and EU. The company says it will expand its team, open new routes to market, and strengthen a reseller and systems integrator ecosystem to shorten enterprise sales cycles. Locstat also plans to keep growing engineering and customer success capacity in South Africa to support both African and European clients.
Executive Commentary
Co-founder and chief executive Ryno Goosen frames the mission as converting complex connected data into decisions that move metrics. He says the platform has been proven in demanding transactional environments, and that funding will accelerate delivery to customers who want to see risks earlier and create value faster than legacy stacks allow. Goosen adds that investments in the product and partner network will be focused on measurable outcomes for fraud, compliance, and growth.
Investor View
Portugal Gateway Fund describes Locstat as a defensible technology with global potential in graph database software and real time analytics. The firm emphasizes confidence in the management team’s ability to execute a European expansion while maintaining discipline on product reliability and security. Its support includes preparing the company for a successful Series A by tightening operating cadence and validating repeatable sales motions.
Competitive Positioning
Locstat competes in a crowded risk analytics and real time decisioning market, but its graph centric design and event processing engine position it to model relationships that rule based and table centric systems often miss. Combining streaming and static data into a unified context allows customers to detect patterns, reduce false positives, and personalize interventions at scale. That differentiation will matter in financial services, where precision, auditability, and speed directly affect loss rates and customer lifetime value.
This pre-Series A round gives Locstat the runway to test and refine a European playbook while reinforcing its African base. The milestones to watch are enterprise logos in the UK and EU, annual recurring revenue velocity, and time to value in fraud and compliance deployments. Execution risk remains in long sales cycles and regulatory demands, but a focused partner ecosystem and proven outcomes in Africa give the company a credible start.
Source: Disruptafrica