Melio AI Launches Highwind – Africa’s First AI Marketplace for Businesses & Developers

Johannesburg, 6 February 2025 – Melio AI, a leading AI startup, today announced the launch of Highwind, Africa’s first AI marketplace, offering businesses quick, affordable, and scalable AI solutions.

Traditional AI projects require months of development, large budgets, and specialised teams. Starting at just $50 (~R900), Highwind changes that by offering ready-to-use AI solutions through flexible subscription plans, pay-as-you-go pricing, and enterprise licensing options. This allows businesses to integrate expert-built models in minutes—without hiring a data science team.

Highwind simplifies AI adoption by packaging data, models, and features into ready-to-use APIs and a simple user interface, covering use cases from document processing and fraud detection to predictive analytics and customer service automation.

"For too long, businesses have faced a frustrating choice: either pay a fortune for custom AI or settle for rigid, off-the-shelf tools," says Greg Desilla, COO of Melio AI. "Highwind changes that. Now, any business can access world-class AI on demand—at a fraction of the usual cost."

A New AI Economy for Businesses and Data Scientists

Highwind bridges the gap between expensive, custom AI solutions and rigid, off-the-shelf tools. Instead of spending six months and $95,000+ building AI, businesses can now access pre-built, tested, and ready-to-deploy solutions with minimal configuration.

Businesses can enhance their core offerings through AI, gaining a competitive edge. The platform’s user-friendly interface allows companies to browse, purchase, and request AI solutions tailored to their unique needs.

"Highwind is a game changer," says Pragasen Naicker, former COO of OneLinkage. "We integrated AI into our platform quickly, improving efficiency and customer experience—without the overhead of a data science team."

Beyond businesses, Highwind empowers data scientists by making it easy to deploy and monetise AI models. Instead of struggling with infrastructure, marketing, go-to-market strategies, customer onboarding, usage tracking, and support, AI developers can focus on what they do best—building AI solutions—while Highwind handles the rest.

"Highwind lets data scientists focus on innovation, not infrastructure," adds Harry Lee, Co-Founder & CTO of Melio AI. "We take care of deployment, monetisation, and customer onboarding—turning AI models into revenue without the operational headaches."

???Businesses can request new or tailored AI solutions to fit your needs: Request Here.

?? Data scientists can begin the verification and onboarding process here: Apply Here.

Enterprise AI & The Future of AI Agents

Highwind enables private AI marketplaces for enterprises, allowing them to deploy a secure, internal AI hub within their cloud environment. This gives decentralised data science teams access to pre-approved external AI solutions while ensuring full visibility and collaboration on in-house AI models.

Looking ahead, Highwind is expanding its capabilities with AI Agents, enabling businesses to chain AI use cases together into complex, automated workflows—a major step toward fully automated business intelligence.

Discover Highwind Today

Highwind is live today at highwind.ai. Explore AI solutions, or sign up as a data scientist to start monetising your models.

?? Press inquiries, interviews, or media kits: [email protected]

?? View here for the official press release.

About Melio AI:

Melio AI makes AI accessible and impactful for businesses worldwide. Since 2019, we’ve partnered with 20+ industry leaders across finance, healthcare, and technology, delivering scalable, secure, and cost-effective AI solutions with measurable outcomes.

As an AWS Advanced Tier Partner, we serve a global clientele by combining enterprise-grade technologies with affordability, speed, and inclusivity to help businesses of all sizes thrive. Through Highwind, our AI marketplace, we offer ready-to-deploy solutions that reduce barriers to AI adoption, enabling businesses to solve critical challenges quickly and effectively.

At Melio AI, our mission is simple: making AI frictionless for businesses everywhere.