Who Owns Andela?

Andela was founded in May 2014 by Jeremy Johnson, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, Nadayar Enegesi, Brice Nkengsa, Ian Carnevale, and Christina Sass. The founding idea was that talent is evenly distributed globally but opportunity is not, and that African software developers could serve global companies remotely if properly assessed, trained, and matched.

The company launched with training campuses in Lagos, Nigeria, and later Nairobi, Kenya, running a selective fellowship that accepted a small fraction of applicants, trained them in software development, and placed them on remote teams at companies such as Microsoft and GitHub. Early funding included a $10 million Series A in 2015 and a $24 million Series B in 2016 led by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the foundation's first major startup investment in Africa.

A $40 million Series C followed in 2017, and a $100 million Series D in January 2019 pushed total funding past $180 million. By that point Andela had trained and placed more than a thousand engineers and had expanded to Uganda and Rwanda.

In 2020 the company made a decisive shift. It closed its physical campuses, ended the resident fellowship model, and relaunched as a fully remote, global talent marketplace open to senior engineers across dozens of countries rather than only entry-level developers in a few African cities. The pivot broadened its talent pool dramatically while keeping Africa the largest talent region.

The September 2021 Series E, led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 with participation from Whale Rock and existing investors, brought total funding to about $381 million at a $1.5 billion valuation. Carrol Chang, formerly of Uber and McKinsey, became CEO, succeeding co-founder Jeremy Johnson.

Since 2022 Andela has repositioned around artificial intelligence demand, describing its marketplace as a human compute layer for AI systems. Its work now includes supplying engineers who train and evaluate models, deploying AI native engineering teams, and upskilling client workforces. Workforce estimates for 2025 and 2026 put direct headcount near 1,000 to 1,300, down from a 2022 peak above 1,700, while the contractor network numbers in the tens of thousands across more than 100 countries.