With Zero Funding, Nigerian AI Startup Decide Ranks Fourth Globally for Spreadsheet Accuracy

Why It Matters

Decide’s high ranking proves that resource‑constrained African startups can compete with heavily funded global players, signaling a shift in AI talent and innovation toward the continent. It also validates the practical value of AI agents in everyday spreadsheet workflows, a critical productivity bottleneck for many enterprises.

Key Takeaways

• Decide placed fourth in global spreadsheet AI benchmark
• Achieved 82.5% accuracy, solving 330 of 400 tasks
• Operates with three staff, zero external funding
• Gained 3,000 users within weeks of launch
• Benchmark created by Chinese universities, introduced at NeurIPS 2024

Pulse Analysis

The SpreadsheetBench benchmark, unveiled at NeurIPS 2024 by researchers from Tsinghua and Renmin universities, has quickly become the gold standard for measuring AI performance on real‑world spreadsheet problems. By sourcing tasks from online forums, it evaluates formula generation, data cleaning, multi‑sheet navigation, and logical reasoning—skills that directly translate to everyday office productivity. Rankings on this benchmark are closely watched by investors and enterprise buyers, because they signal an agent’s readiness for deployment in data‑intensive environments across finance, logistics, and consulting.

Decide, a three‑person Nigerian startup founded by former Flutterwave engineer Abiodun Adetona, achieved an 82.5 % accuracy score, solving 330 of 400 verified tasks and earning fourth place globally. The platform distinguishes itself by not only generating formulas but also executing changes within the spreadsheet and providing plain‑language explanations. Within just 24 days of launch, it attracted 1,000 users, and today the user base exceeds 3,000, including paying customers. This performance rivals well‑funded competitors such as Shortcut.ai, which operates with $30 million in capital.

The success of Decide underscores a broader shift in African AI: lean teams can compete on technical merit without deep pockets. However, scaling to enterprise‑grade deployments often requires capital for infrastructure, sales, and regulatory compliance. As African founders demonstrate product‑market fit, the challenge will be securing investment that respects local problem‑solving ethos while enabling global reach. If venture capital aligns with these realities, more African AI firms could climb rankings like SpreadsheetBench, reshaping the continent’s reputation from cost‑effective innovators to world‑class technology providers.

With zero funding, Nigerian AI startup Decide ranks fourth globally for spreadsheet accuracy

With zero funding, Nigerian AI startup Decide ranks fourth globally for spreadsheet accuracy · Victoria Fakiya · Senior Writer, Techpoint Digest · February 6, 2026

Nigerian AI startup Decide has emerged as the fourth most accurate AI agent for spreadsheet tasks globally, according to results from SpreadsheetBench, a widely referenced benchmark for evaluating AI performance on real‑world spreadsheet problems.

The ranking places Decide alongside well‑funded global AI startups, marking a notable milestone for a company that only launched publicly a few months ago.

Founded by ex‑Flutterwave developer Abiodun Adetona, Decide got 1,000 users just 24 days after launch. Adetona has revealed to Techpoint Africa that the product now has over 3,000 users, including some who are paid.

While it currently has just three employees and no external funding, only three agents rank higher than Decide. These include Nobie Agent, Shortcut.ai, and Qingqiu Agent. Shortcut.ai, for example, was created by Fundamental Research Labs, which has raised $30 million in funding, while Qingqiu Agent has over 5,000 employees and a ~$5 billion market cap.

Adetona said SpreadsheetBench measures how well AI agents can handle practical spreadsheet tasks such as writing formulas, cleaning messy data, working across multiple sheets, and reasoning through complex Excel workflows. Decide recorded an 82.5 % accuracy score, solving 330 out of 400 verified tasks.

To understand why the ranking matters, it helps to look at how SpreadsheetBench works. The benchmark was developed by researchers from Tsinghua University and Renmin University of China and was introduced at NeurIPS 2024, one of the world’s most respected artificial‑intelligence conferences.

“Rather than testing AI on artificial or simplified problems, SpreadsheetBench is built from real Excel questions sourced from online forums where users seek help with complex spreadsheet issues,” Adetona said.

The “Verified” subset used for Decide’s evaluation contains 400 carefully curated tasks, ensuring that results are consistent and comparable across agents. This makes the benchmark a trusted indicator of how well an AI system performs in real workplace scenarios.

Decide was built out of frustration with how much time professionals spend manually cleaning data, debugging formulas, and moving between sheets. The product works by understanding the structure of a spreadsheet, executing changes directly, and explaining its actions in plain language rather than just generating suggestions.

Beyond the product, Decide’s ranking feeds into a broader conversation about AI in Africa. According to Techpoint Africa’s list of notable African AI products of 2025, African AI in 2025 has been defined less by scale and more by intent — solving immediate, practical problems with limited resources. But Decide’s performance raises a bigger question: should African AI startups begin thinking at scale? However, the capital required to build on a global scale may hold many talented African founders back.