Flowt, a Nairobi-based fintech that uses artificial intelligence to convert businesses' financial records into lender-ready data, has raised a $550,000 pre-seed round from Delta40 Fund I, Impacc, and Argidius Foundation. The funding will support the company's push to expand lending to small climate-focused businesses that struggle to access bank credit.

Flowt applies AI to analyse financial records — including bank statements, M-Pesa statements, and accounting data — to assess small businesses' creditworthiness. The company says many such businesses are locked out of traditional lending because banks lack reliable financial history on them. The reliance on M-Pesa data reflects how mobile money has become a primary transaction channel for Kenyan small businesses, generating digital records that legacy credit assessment methods were not designed to use.

The round comes as African fintechs increasingly turn to alternative data and AI to address the continent's persistent SME credit gap. Flowt is betting that better financial data can make overlooked climate businesses easier and cheaper to finance.

The startup has already issued its first loan facility to GreenBay, a Kenyan company that refurbishes and resells household appliances and solar home systems. Flowt told TechCabal that it connected to GreenBay's accounting system and analysed bank statements to assess cash flows and repayment capacity within days.

"Funders in Africa have three bad options when they look at a small business," said Elana Laichena, Flowt's founder and chief executive. "They can demand collateral, conduct lengthy due diligence, or price loans more highly to compensate for limited information. All three are responses to the same problem, which is that nobody can see trustworthy numbers."

Flowt's software pulls transaction information from accounting systems and bank records, compares the datasets, and produces standardised financial information used to assess credit.

According to the company, the financing gap for small businesses in Africa exceeds $330 billion. Most of these businesses fall between microfinance and commercial banking, and due diligence on loans below $200,000 can also prove uneconomical for lenders.

A competitive segment

Flowt is entering an increasingly crowded African lending technology market, where startups such as 4G Capital, Pezesha, and Numida have spent the past five years using alternative data to make credit decisions.

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) estimates Kenya's SME financing gap at nearly 21% of GDP, while an ongoing policy review puts demand for financing at about KES 4 trillion ($30.9 billion), against roughly KES 700 billion ($5.4 billion) provided by commercial banks.

Flowt's distinction lies in its focus on climate-related SMEs and its effort to build financial intelligence software alongside its lending business.

That focus coincides with climate technology becoming a larger share of African venture investment. In 2025, climate-tech startups received over $1.5 billion, representing 40% of disclosed venture funding on the continent.

Flowt provides short-term loans in partnership with Choice Bank, a microfinance lender, and bases underwriting on transaction histories rather than fixed-asset collateral. It also plans to sell financial intelligence software to businesses, investors, and lenders.

"A lender that only lends has to raise capital forever in order to grow," Laichena said. "The data we build to underwrite a loan is worth something to the business that generated it, and worth something again to the investor trying to find that business."

Founded by Laichena in 2025 and incubated at Delta40 Venture Studio, the company is targeting a $1 million loan book by the end of 2026. For a pre-seed-stage lender, that target, along with the pace of new loan facilities after GreenBay and early uptake of its financial intelligence software, will be the main early indicators of whether the two-sided lending-plus-data model is working at scale.

Laichena's interest in solving SME funding problems predates Flowt. She previously ran a company that converted sugarcane waste into an alternative to firewood, an experience in which selling to schools on long payment terms created a working-capital squeeze. She later worked at Open Capital, a management consulting and financial advisory firm, before becoming managing director for Kenya at Delta40 Venture Studio, where Flowt was incubated.