Invictus Capital has pioneered the Titan AI Tool which identifies fraudulent and copycat content to address the rise of white paper plagiarism in the cryptocurrency space - and the resulting damage to the reputation of the industry. "Performing due diligence is vital for the health of the cryptocurrency community -- we need to stand together to prevent dubious and fraudulent projects from taking investor funds," says Daniel Schwartzkopff, CEO of Invictus Capital. The Titan AI Tool uses machine learning techniques to analyze and detect plagiarism in ICO white papers. It evaluates the originality and legitimacy of early-stage investment opportunities within the ICO space. Uploading white papers for comparison also helps to expand the Titan database and benefits the community.

Digital All Stars is a series of articles which aims to celebrate the best of South African digital. The articles, which will appear on Memeburn and Ventureburn, recognise and celebrate South Africa's best digital entrepreneurs, business people, advertisers, and media professionals among others. In this piece we take a look at some interesting African startups involved in developing artificial intelligence (AI) solutions. South African startup DataProphet last year received a significant investment of an undisclosed amount from Yellowwoods Capital Holdings to expand its international offering. As part of the deal, DataProphet will act as the advanced analytics partner for the group.

There are few highlights for most tech startups as sought after as cracking the international market and for most of these startups none quite as tantalising as breaking into Silicon Valley. The home of some of the world's biggest tech companies including Apple Inc., Facebook and Google, Silicon Valley is the leading hub and startup ecosystem for high-tech innovation and development. According to a January 2016 report from the Martin Prosperity Institute titled Rise of the Global Startup City, the San Francisco Bay Area, which spans Silicon Valley and San Francisco, remains the world's leading centre for venture capital investment attracting nearly 11 billion, more than a quarter of all global venture investment. A growing number of South African startups have also sought to grab a piece of the Silicon Valley slice, however, this does take some work. If you have your sights set on entering the international playing field, the most difficult thing is getting your foot in the door, says Daniel Schwartzkopff, commercial director and co-founder of Cape Town-based startup and machine learning specialists, DataProphet, who also spends part of his time in the US working with DataProphet's Silicon Valley-based clientele.

Daniel Schwartzkopff, commercial director and DataProphet co-founder, says the start-up is looking towards the European and North American markets for further expansion. Yellowwoods Capital Holdings, a member of the European-based global investment and private equity focused Yellowwoods Group, has acquired a significant interest in DataProphet, where the local start-up will act as the advanced analytics partner for the group. The group's local investments include Hollard Insurance, Clientele and Nandos, among others. While the actual value of the investment into the start-up remains under wraps, DataProphet commercial director and co-founder, Daniel Schwartzkopff, says the business has hit multimillion-dollar status. "As a private fund, our investor partners would prefer us not to discuss the amount. It can be disclosed, however, that DataProphet was priced at a multimillion-dollar valuation," he explains.

ONLY a handful of South Africans are using artificial intelligence to help solve business and social problems, and to make money. The past year's devastating drought might have been mitigated if information about previous droughts had been used to predict it and to prepare, says Bhekisipho Twala, director of the Institute for Intelligent Systems at the University of Johannesburg. Data scientists could also help Eskom predict the where and when of electricity use, easing its task of keeping the lights on when power supply is constrained. "The whole point of data mining or machine learning is finding hidden information that can make business (or other) decisions easier," says Obakeng Moepya, one of the three founders of Johannesburg-based Isazi Consulting, which uses advanced mathematics and statistics to solve difficult problems. Machine learning -- also known as artificial intelligence -- is a field of computer science that gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed. Data mining is the analysis step in machine learning, with the goal of extracting patterns and knowledge from large amounts of data.