Last month, Morocco-based Hypeo AI announced a significant fundraising round from investors Madica by Flourish Ventures, Renew Capital, and Digital Africa. For a growing ecosystem like Morocco’s, this is a remarkable feat.

Hypeo AI is tackling one of the biggest challenges in influencer marketing: inefficiency. While traditional campaign management often relies on manual processes, guesswork in pricing, and slow feedback loops, the startup’s technology flips this model by delivering automation, intelligence, and transparency. Our own Charles Rapulu Udoh sat down with Meriam Bessa, Hypeo AI’s co-founder and CEO, to talk about its past, present, and future.

Launch Base Africa: Congratulations on your recent fundraising from Renew Capital, Digital Africa and Madica. How did you connect with these investors?

Meriam Bessa: Thank you. I met Renew Capital in June at an event in Morocco hosted by Plug and Play, which was designed to bridge the gap between investors and startups. My introduction to Digital Africa came through the founders of another fund. Same way I met Madica, recommended by another fund. I’ve found that the ecosystem is quite collaborative; when I talk to funds that aren’t specialized in what we do, they are often kind enough to introduce us to others who are a better fit.

Launch Base Africa: It’s a huge achievement, especially for an AI startup in a market where traction can be challenging. Can you walk us through your journey and the inspiration behind Hypeo AI?

Meriam Bessa: The story starts with my background. I was born and raised in Morocco, where I attended a French school with one of my future co-founders, Oussama. After high school, I studied in France and began my career there at Sony and L’Oréal. In 2008, I returned to Morocco and continued with L’Oréal, handling marketing for the country. Later, at Unilever, my role expanded to cover Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria.

However, I grew deeply frustrated with the corporate environment. Everything was incredibly slow, and every decision required multiple layers of approval. It didn’t fit my personality; I’m efficient, action-oriented, and believe in moving fast. You can make mistakes by moving quickly, but the percentage of success often outweighs the failures. In those big companies, I spent more time convincing people to let me do my job than actually executing the strategy.

A mentor advised me to try a smaller company, so I joined a project to build a new online media outlet in partnership with Le Figaro. It was essentially a startup within an existing company. I built everything from scratch — the strategy, the brand, the platform, and the team. Seeing it succeed and start making money made me realize I could build something of my own.

In 2016, while on maternity leave, I made a bet with my family: if I could build a company and get my first orders within my six-month leave, I would quit my corporate job for good. I did it. I launched my own digital marketing agency, L’Atelier Digital, and it continued to exist and thrive.

The Turning Point: Losing Everything

By January 2023, my agency was doing extremely well, generating $4 million a year with healthy margins. One of our biggest clients had a contract with us worth $600,000 annually, and we were in talks to increase it to over $1 million. My team of 14 people was dedicated almost exclusively to their brands. In anticipation of this growth, I invested in a larger office — a beautiful house — to accommodate more staff and create a space for influencers.

Then, on Friday, January 13th, the unthinkable happened. It was our first day in the new house. One person on my team made a single, small mistake: they forgot to tell a famous Moroccan singer to post one Instagram story for the client’s campaign. Just one story. Because of that, we lost the entire business with this big client. 

I was devastated. I remember the news coming in that morning; I physically collapsed and cried for hours. It felt like I was losing everything. That evening, a director from the big client called and was very harsh. She said, “You’re a businesswoman. You’re losing a big client, but you’ll win others. It’s not like you have stage-four cancer.” Hearing that just hours after my world fell apart was incredibly difficult.

The aftermath was brutal. As a solo founder, I had to manage the entire crisis alone. I had to fire 14 people, negotiate my way out of the two-year lease on the new house, and move back to my old space. I fell into a deep depression, and the market was buzzing with rumors that my company would collapse without this big client. For the next five months, I shut out the noise and focused entirely on two things: working harder than I ever had in my life to save the company, and being a mother to my kids.

The Rebirth: From AI Influencers to Hypeo AI

That period forced me to think differently. I couldn’t rely on a service-based business anymore. I needed something innovative, something that would create a new story for me and my company. With the rise of generative AI, I had an idea: AI influencers.

I created 13 virtual influencers for key our markets: Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, Lebanon, and Nigeria. I knew I needed to do something bold to stand out. The common thread across the Middle East isn’t just language — it’s culture and religion. So, I made one of my AI influencers, Kenza Layli, the first in the world to wear a hijab.

She went viral. Suddenly, everyone in the region was talking about her. We were featured by major news outlets like Al Jazeera and TV stations across the world. Then, we won a global award for “Best AI Influencer Worldwide.”

This proved that I could bounce back, but I quickly realized I was facing the same old problem. Managing these AI influencers for brand collaborations involved the exact same manual, chaotic process of emails, WhatsApp messages, and phone calls that had cost me the contract with the big client. 

That was the lightbulb moment for Hypeo AI. I needed to build a platform that would automate this entire process and eliminate the risk of human error.

Launch Base Africa: So how exactly does Hypeo AI solve these problems, and how does it differ from your old business model?

Meriam Bessa: Hypeo AI is a SaaS marketplace that serves as a central hub for brands and influencers, automating their entire collaboration from start to finish.

• A brand submits a campaign brief to our AI agent.
• The AI analyzes it and recommends the ideal number of influencers, budget, target audience, and other key performance indicators (KPIs).
• The platform provides an AI-powered match with a list of suitable influencers.
• The brand selects influencers, and all negotiations, contracts, and payments are handled on the platform.
• Our AI even helps generate a script, and the platform tracks every task. The influencer uploads content for review, the brand provides feedback, and this loop continues until the content is approved and posted.
• Finally, the brand gets a real-time dashboard to monitor all campaign metrics.

This model is a fundamental shift from service to product. I remember meeting an American investor in 2022 who gave me life-changing advice. He pointed out that my service business was 100% reliant on me. He said, “If you want to be rich, you need a business that isn’t reliant on you, a business that makes money while you sleep, and a business that is cash-now, not cash-later.” Hypeo AI is all three. It’s one scalable product for everyone, not a new custom service for each client. That’s why I’m now in the process of selling the agency to focus exclusively on this product.

Launch Base Africa: You mentioned the hardships of being a solo founder. Tell us about the team you’ve built for Hypeo AI.

Meriam Bessa: I was determined not to make the same mistake again; I actively looked for co-founders.

Oussama Sekkat (CTO): He is my childhood friend from Morocco. We hadn’t seen each other in 20 years when we bumped into each other at the airport in 2022. He told me he was living in the US, working as a senior software engineer at Meta. In June 2024, while I was in New York for a program at Columbia University, I called him. I met him at Meta’s headquarters, pitched him the idea for Hypeo AI, and asked him to be my CTO. Initially, he said no, but in November, he called me back and said, “I’m coming back to Morocco. Let’s do this.”

Salah Eddine Mimouni (COO): I met Salah in January 2025 at the 1 Billion Followers Summit in Dubai, where we were both invited as speakers. He’s also Moroccan, and we knew of each other. He pulled me aside to show me a platform he was building, which was focused on influencer data. I showed him what I was working on, which was focused on AI and workflow automation. Our visions were perfectly aligned, so we decided to merge our projects and build Hypo AI together.

Launch Base Africa: What is your current status, and what does the competitive landscape look like?

Meriam Bessa: We are currently in beta testing with 18 clients and plan for our official launch in October 2025. With the addition of these investors, we are looking to close our first fundraising round soon. 

In terms of competition, there is no one doing what we do in Morocco or the wider French-speaking African region. There are some competitors in Kenya but their AI capabilities are not as advanced as ours. Our biggest competitor is in Saudi Arabia — a company called Halo AI, which raised around $6 million in January.

Launch Base Africa: Finally, what is the biggest challenge for Morocco’s tech ecosystem, and what solutions do you propose?

Meriam Bessa: Morocco has a lot of developing activity, and the government is making efforts, but the ecosystem remains fragmented. I believe three things are crucial for improvement:

1. A Centralized Hub: We desperately need a single, physical place like France’s Station F. A hub where startups can meet, find investors and business angels, and get information and support on all administrative processes. Right now, there are many initiatives, but they aren’t organized.
2. Startup-Friendly Policies: We have so many talented young Moroccans. To motivate them to build startups, we need to simplify administrative processes and, most importantly, offer significant tax benefits for early-stage companies.
3. Access to Foreign Currency: This is a huge obstacle. Moroccan startups can only access $100k per year in foreign currency for international expenses like ads or SaaS tools. This is extremely restrictive compared to global competition. The current restrictions make it incredibly difficult for tech companies to pay for international software, cloud services, and talent. Easing these regulations is essential for us to compete globally.

My advice to all founders is simple: Never, ever stop dreaming.

Udoh Charles

Charles has carved a niche at the forefront of Africa’s booming tech scene. With years of experience, Udoh has become a go-to expert for multi-million dollar deals in venture capital, private equity, and intellectual property across a vast landscape — from Delaware and New York to Singapore and South Africa. But his expertise extends beyond just the legalese. Udoh is also a corporate governance, data privacy, and tax whiz. An award-winning writer and researcher, he’s passionate about chronicling Africa’s startup story, cementing his position as a true pioneer in the field.