Elara-Cortex scientists and engineers reviewing a precision medical-device design in the clean room

An Elara-Cortex scientist examining a sample under quality control in the clean lab

The Elara-Cortex science and engineering team at the facility

A scientist assembling a precision medical device in the clean room

Mathematical Infrastructure for Complex Systems · Institute for Decision Systems & Number Theory

The science of more from less.

Our scientists and engineers built BT Industrial's products for Würth in Germany and Owens & Minor, a Fortune 500 medical multinational. The same team now builds Elara-Cortex, a focused mathematics and technology product.

39 patents & trademarks, 60 more this year Healthcare, aerospace & military applications 300 medications & treatments registered in South Africa Medical training for health professionals Clients in Germany and the USA

One engine, for everything that moves.

A country should never have to choose between what it needs and what it can afford. So we build infrastructure that does far more with far less. We prove every step.

Elara-Cortex is mathematical infrastructure for complex systems. We built one optimisation engine, .LEKOLA CORTEX™, for dynamic systems. It finds the answer to any dynamic system in a closed mathematical form, consistent with the laws of physics. That is why a single engine moves everything: routing, scheduling, flight planning and your data all run on the same mathematics. It is the one engine under every product we make.

A team across mathematics, engineering & science #1 in the world, computational efficiency, of 250,000 Two Presidential Awards

Try the engine, free →

The science

Computational efficiency is a discipline, not a slogan.

Every system has a lowest-energy path. It is the least work that still gets the job done. Most software never finds it. Our work is to find it, hold to it, and measure it. That is the difference between a service that needs a row of servers and one that needs a single small box; between a data-centre that must keep growing and one that does far more on what it already has.

01 · MATHEMATICS

Find the shortest path through the work.

Original mathematics, developed in-house, that turns a hard problem into a far smaller one.

02 · ENGINEERING

Build it to survive the real world.

Fast, lean code that runs on small, ordinary hardware. It keeps working off-grid.

03 · PROOF

Check every step by machine.

The result is verified before it ships. We measure; we do not assume.

We keep the method ours. We don't sell the secret. We sell what it does. The proof is that we run our own service on it, every day.

Why it matters

Built for the road, not the lab.

It keeps working when the signal drops.

A route that finishes the journey even when the network does not. We built it for the dead zones, the back roads and the borders. Not the demo.

The whole service runs on one free-tier server.

Our live production engine routes 180,474 towns worldwide from a single server on AWS’s free tier, and it keeps routing when the signal dies. More from less is not our slogan. It is our hosting bill.

It is proven, not promised.

Every step is checked by machine before it ships. The mathematics is held to a standard, not a hope.

Where we come from

Born of Africa. Built to transform.

Africa's infrastructure cannot be outsourced. It has to be built by people who understand its soils, its water and its climate. A World Bank study of 134 utilities across 13 countries found that infrastructure there often fails within 10 years, decades short of its design life. We set out to change that.

1M km

HDPE pipeline produced and installed

25M kg

Products manufactured to date

100+

Projects completed across four continents

1,800 t

In-house manufacturing capacity each month

2007

Lekola Global Capital founded.

2008 to 2012

Acquisitions and turnarounds across sectors. The foundation for BT Industrial.

2013

Acquired AfricaWeather.

2014

Founded BT Industrial Group. Kgomotso Lekola named runner-up Businessman of the Year.

2015

AfricaWeather sold to ASX-listed FairFax Media (Weatherzone).

2016

First BT Industrial factory opened in Germiston.

2018

South Africa's fastest-growing HDPE manufacturer.

2019

ISO certifications achieved. CEO Circle award.

2020

Answered COVID-19 with medical-grade fabrics and masks. Entrepreneurship award.

2021

Patented the BT Optimus low dead-volume syringe for the vaccine rollout.

2022

Industrialist Award at the SA Investment Conference and the Presidential Award for Manufacturing Excellence.

2023

Expanded the engineering and consulting practice.

Two Presidential Awards. The same team and the same discipline now build Elara-Cortex.

Pedigree

This is not our first hard system.

The team behind Elara-Cortex built the water infrastructure that keeps mines running and, when the pandemic hit, the protective and medical products that reached the wards. We built them to the standards medicine demands.

Water infrastructure→ Medical & protective products→ Routing & data engines

Trusted by

Certified to

Elara-Cortex at work

NAFCOC → Parliament

Our strategic-litigation system built the case that took the National African Federated Chamber of Commerce to Parliament over the treatment of black industrialists. Parliament agreed to open a formal inquiry. Read it →

Medical device clean room — Medical devices · ISO 13485 clean room

Production line — 1,200–1,800 tonnes processed every month

University partnership session — With our universities

Our proprietary technologies were developed with leading engineering universities. The medical line is built to ISO 13485 and cleared by SAHPRA. It put South African-made protection into South African wards.

Universities

We teach the method inside the academy.

A method that does not hold up does not get taught at a university. Ours is taught, and invited onto the stage, at universities across South Africa. The classroom is the proof.

VAAL UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

The Innovation Oracle Course on IP

Intellectual property and the mathematics of decision systems, taught to senior researchers. Watch the session →

UNIVERSITY OF PRETORIA

Statistics on the MBA faculty

Teaching statistics to the next generation of business leaders, on the MBA programme. University of Pretoria →

TSHWANE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

Featured speaker

Invited to address the university on innovation, industry and the science behind the work. See the feature →

Founded & led by

Kgomotso Lekola

Founder & CEO, Elara-Cortex · Founder & Group MD, BT Industrial Group

The team is led by a builder of things a country cannot do without. Over more than twenty years Kgomotso has run some of South Africa's most demanding businesses, founded BT Industrial Group and grown it across four continents, and earned two Presidential Awards for manufacturing.

He keynotes the Mint Directors Conference and holds the world's top rank for computational efficiency on GIMPS, the global prime-number search. The whole team is held to that same standard.

Public scoreboard · GIMPS · mersenne.org

First in the world on a public, refereed scoreboard.

GIMPS is the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search. It is a public, refereed leaderboard with roughly 250,000 participants over thirty years. It scores two things at once. How fast you climb, and how much you achieve for each unit of compute. On both, the Elara-Cortex founder's name is at the top. You do not have to take our word for it. It is a public page.

WHY IT MATTERS TO YOU

The name at the top builds your engine.

The discipline that puts our founder first of 250,000 for computational efficiency is the same discipline inside the engine that routes your fleet. The name is on a public page.

MOST COMPUTE-EFFICIENT

The same board, far less compute.

We reach the top of the scoreboard on a small fraction of the hardware the leaders use. The whole engine is built on that same efficiency.

THE POINT

A public proof, not a claim.

Anyone can check it. The mathematics that tops this board is the mathematics inside Elara-Cortex.

See the public scoreboard on mersenne.org →

Recognition

The work, on the record.

Keynote at the Mint Directors Conference — Keynote · Mint Directors Conference

Speaking at ZIMEC, Zambia — ZIMEC · Zambia

Black Industrialists and Exporters Conference panel — Black Industrialists & Exporters · AfCFTA

Registered patents and trademarks, with 60 more filing this year

300

Medications and treatments registered in South Africa

2×

Presidential Awards for manufacturing excellence

Elara-Cortex founder, ranked first in the world for computational efficiency on GIMPS, from 250,000 participants

★ CEO Circle Winner 2019. One of seven national champions chosen from 140 ★ Black Industrialists Excellence Award · Manufacturing ★ Runner-up · Businessman of the Year ★ 200+ people across four continents

On the world stage