Max A. Smith

Max Smith is the co-founder and CEO of Lengo AI, the first Intelligence Platform to “stop guessing” emerging markets. Max earned a B.A. at Kenyon College and a Fulbright Research scholarship for an impact study of mobile phones on the rural-urban divide in Togo. His experiences in various African countries span across telecommunications and UX/UI research. Lengo AI was founded in 2023 and has since risen to become one of the leading Tech startups in Africa. It is backed by Google and one of the few startups selected in the first Google AI cohort. Lengo also recently raised one of the largest pre-seed rounds in the continent with leading investors. The company’s rapid growth has been featured in BBC News, TV5Monde and more recently Tech Cabal, Spark Africa and Jeune Afrique which nominated Lengo as one of the top startups to watch. Lengo AI is leveraging the latest technologies to deliver the first geo-mapping tool to locate retail shops anywhere across the globe and the first AI voice assistant for retailers to better manage their shops. In turn, Lengo’s platform allows global retail brands to act on critical data for their go-to-market strategy, in places where this information was previously unavailable.

‍