A Cape Town-based artificial intelligence (AI) platform will form the core of operations for global drinks company Mack Brands, which trades in 38 countries.
This follows the appointment of Cape Town firm Domanski.AI by Mack Brands to build Vanta, its in-house AI platform, under a long-term agreement signed at the company’s headquarters.
The platform is intended to centralise business data and support faster, evidence-based decision-making as the company scales internationally.
Mack Brands, the company behind Tequila Rosaluz, produced in Mexico using 100% Blue Weber agave and traditional methods, has built its reputation on positioning, design thinking and a disruptive operating model.
Led by founder and CEO Nic Mack, the company is expanding across multiple markets, with significant growth in its primary market of New York.
Domanski.AI said this growth generates large volumes of data, which Vanta is designed to capture and organise across distributor reports, e-commerce platforms, finance systems, emails, project management tools and global marketing campaigns.
The company said Vanta will provide a single interface for Mack Brands to question its business data and receive insights drawn from connected systems.
It is built on Domanski.AI’s In-Seat AI methodology: agents integrated into existing workflows, operated by the company rather than replacing staff or relying on external software, according to Domanski.AI.
Paul Domanski, founder of Domanski.AI, said the appointment challenges perceptions about where advanced AI capability can be developed.
“Many businesses still assume advanced AI capability only exists in Silicon Valley. This engagement shows that world-class AI systems can be designed and built in Cape Town for companies competing in demanding global markets.
“Our approach is simple to say and hard to do: bespoke AI systems [integrated into] your employees, not in place of them. Mack Brands is a lean, design-led team, and it stays that way. Vanta automates repetitive tasks and gives every decision a foundation of evidence, allowing the team to focus on brands, customers and growth.”
Mack said the Vanta platform is central to the Mack Brand's growth strategy.
“I have no interest in being a company that says it is AI-enabled, because everyone says that now. We are building our own central system of intelligence: an ecosystem trained on our business that helps us make decisions faster and more effectively as it learns.
“Everything we do is built on keeping things simple, agile and design-led, and Vanta adds operational capability without adding layers to the business.”
Work began in Cape Town this month with a foundation phase mapping data sources, assigning ownership and setting standards for automation .
The platform will then extend across the group’s brands and territories, supporting Mack Brands’ next phase of distributor and retail growth in the US and beyond.
For Domanski.AI, the engagement is a step in exporting South African-built AI to international markets, highlighting the country’s growing reputation for commercially focused AI.
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