South African computer brand designing and building new AI computers
Mustek’s in-house brand Mecer is designing and positioning its desktops and notebooks as complete artificial intelligence (AI) systems.
According to Mustek brand executive Michael Kan, the South African ICT distributor wanted to make the process of buying an AI PC easier and more transparent.
“From our perspective at Mecer, the AI boom is structural, not cyclical; this isn’t a short spike that resets to 2022,” Kan said.
“Our adaptation is to treat AI as a baseline requirement in every segment we build for, and to design and position PCs as complete AI systems.”
Therefore, every computer Mecer produces is now designed with AI at its core. Kan said Mecer will prioritise the right computer processing units (CPUs) over flashy components.
Effectively, Mecer is prioritising the entire system experience rather than selecting the best graphics processing units (GPUs) and neural processing units (NPUs).
“In real-world inference, the CPU is the air-traffic controller that routes data, manages memory, batches requests, and orchestrates what happens before the GPU or NPU runs the model,” he said.
Kan added that an underpowered processor can choke, or slow, what would otherwise be a capable AI PC.
“At Mecer, we’re focusing our roadmap on AI-ready business notebooks and workstations, built around today’s NPU-enabled platforms, while we’ll keep talking about balance over hype,” he said.
“Customers get better everyday AI performance from a well-matched Core Ultra or Ryzen AI configuration, rather than a GPU-heavy spec paired with a bottlenecked processor.”
Founded in 1987 by Michael’s father, David Kan, Mustek was established to provide affordable, locally manufactured hardware to compete with international imports in South Africa.
Mustek announced a big push into the AI space following its R7-million acquisition of a controlling stake in business-to-business marketplace Business AI in September 2025.
The South African startup is aiming to provide enterprises with a single, trusted environment to access vetted AI vendors, products, platforms, solution providers and data centres.
Mustek sees a significant opportunity in AI
Mustek CEO Hein Engelbrecht said that “anything and everything” to do with AI will be able to present their services and support on the marketplace, and transact through the platform, after vetting.
“While generative AI has moved through its initial hype cycle, enterprises are now focusing on practical AI use cases with measurable returns, particularly in analytics, automation, and cybersecurity,” he said.
Engelbrecht said that Mustek’s push into AI products presents a significant opportunity, with the company aiming to capitalise on growth in AI-enabled hardware, software, and services.
At the AI marketplace’s launch, Business AI revealed that Dublin-based Beyond Now, an AI ecosystem orchestration platform provider, provided its core infrastructure.
Beyond Now said it was joining forces with Business AI to power Africa’s first vendor-agnostic enterprise AI marketplace.
The partnership is purely to provide a platform that enables South African companies to be dynamic, shifting vendors as needed.
“We’ve all read reports of poor return on enterprise AI investments in so-called developed markets,” said Business AI CEO Rudi Dreyer, former CTO of 4Sight Holdings.
“Too many projects are failing due to poor implementation, lack of governance or overreliance on a single model or vendor,” Dreyer stated. He said Beyond Now’s platform directly avoided vendor lock-in risks.
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