Taiwo Akinropo Launches Someone@ After HeyFood Processed ₦6.1 Billion
Updated
Updated · Business Insider Africa · Jul 15
Taiwo Akinropo Launches Someone@ After HeyFood Processed ₦6.1 Billion
1 articles · Updated · Business Insider Africa · Jul 15
Summary
Applied General Agents is Akinropo’s new AI company, and its product Someone@ is built to complete tasks autonomously—managing calendars, email follow-ups and scheduling rather than just answering prompts.
That shift grew out of lessons from HeyFood, where Akinropo treated food delivery as a payments-and-logistics problem and built around prepaid wallets, tighter coordination and profitable unit economics.
HeyFood, backed by Y Combinator, went on to process more than ₦6.1 billion in transactions, surpass 260,000 app downloads and create income opportunities for over 1,000 riders and merchant partners.
Akinropo says the broader goal is for Africa to build and own AI systems, not remain only a market for technology developed elsewhere.
Can Africa build its own AI future or will it just adopt foreign security frameworks?
As AI agents work autonomously, what is the new role for human oversight in business?
How can innovators prevent autonomous AI from becoming the ultimate insider threat?
Building Africa’s AI Future: Taiwo Akinropo’s Strategic Pivot from HeyFood to Applied General Agents
Overview
Taiwo Akinropo, after founding and scaling Heyfood to billions in transactions, discovered that much of modern work is about coordination rather than just task execution. This realization led him to create Applied General Agents (AGA), an AI lab focused on building autonomous software agents that can handle real-world coordination and tasks, going beyond simple chatbots. Drawing on his experience with Heyfood and Serveet, Akinropo’s vision for AGA is to develop practical AI solutions that directly address everyday challenges, aiming to empower individuals and organizations through advanced, agentic technology.