In 2026, Kelechi Ibe partnered with Sam Ayo to launch TaxStreem, an AI-powered tax compliance platform designed to automate how businesses calculate, interpret, and file taxes.
Launched in March 2026, TaxStreem applies machine learning to financial transactions in real time, aiming to remove the manual burden that has long defined tax compliance in Nigeria.
“AI understands context and nuances, and it gets better with training. A tax technology, as I had always envisaged, could only have been possible with AI,” Ibe said.
Under Nigeria’s evolving tax framework, businesses, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises will be required to adopt electronic invoicing systems from July 2027. The shift is expected to tighten compliance and improve transparency across the tax system.
But compliance is not simply about issuing digital invoices. Businesses must first determine the correct tax treatment for every transaction, whether it attracts value-added tax (VAT), qualifies for exemption, is zero-rated, or is subject to withholding tax.
This is the layer TaxStreem is targeting.
Inside TaxStreem’s four-layer architecture
TaxStreem positions itself as a tax “infrastructure layer”, sitting directly on top of a company’s financial activity. Its platform is built around four core components:
1. Numens: AI-powered tax computation
At the heart of the system is Numens, an AI engine trained on Nigerian tax laws. When businesses connect their accounts, ranging from commercial banks to fintech platforms. Numens analyses each transaction, interprets its purpose, assigns the correct tax treatment, and explains its reasoning.
This approach reduces reliance on manual reconciliation while aiming to ensure no transaction is overlooked.
2. Flux: automated tax filing
Flux handles compliance execution. The tool logs into government portals, including the Nigeria Revenue Service system, submits returns, and retrieves proof of filing, automating a process that is often time-consuming and error-prone.
3. Prism: invoicing and accounts management
Prism addresses both accounts payable and receivable.
On the expense side, it replaces email-based invoice submissions with a vendor portal where invoices are uploaded and automatically reviewed for tax errors or inconsistencies.
On the revenue side, businesses can generate invoices directly within the platform. The system determines the correct tax treatment instantly. For instance, entering a product such as diapers is automatically classified as VAT-exempt under Nigerian law, with the correct structure applied to the final invoice.
4. Martina: AI-driven insights
The final layer, Martina, is an AI chatbot that sits on top of the platform’s data. Beyond answering tax-related queries, it provides insights into business performance and supports decision-making.
To balance performance with data privacy, TaxStreem combines its proprietary tax-trained model with external systems such as Google’s Gemini for non-sensitive tasks.
“What we did is create a custom domain-driven model that is proprietary to us and leverage frontier models to run some mundane tasks for some of the things that would not require user data to protect data privacy within the financial sector,” co-founder Ayo noted.
What you need to know
TaxStreem enters a space already populated by expense management and accounting platforms such as QuickBooks, Xero, and FreshBooks, alongside local tools like Bujeti and Duplo.
However, Ibe does not view them as direct competitors. Instead, he sees TaxStreem as a complementary layer, one that can integrate into existing financial workflows.
The startup operates a dual revenue model.
For SMEs, it offers a subscription priced at ₦25,000 (approximately $18.49) per month. Larger organisations can access an enterprise plan with customised pricing. Additionally, TaxStreem provides APIs to fintechs, banking platforms, and payment providers seeking to embed tax compliance into their products.
To date, the company has raised an undisclosed friends-and-family round, which Ibe describes as being in the “tens of thousands of dollars”.
What comes next
Looking ahead, TaxStreem plans to expand its capabilities to include state-level tax filings, beginning with integration into the Lagos Internal Revenue Service system.
The company is also quietly working on deeper integrations with fintech platforms as enforcement across the sector intensifies.
For Ibe, the timing is no coincidence.
“The government is going to enforce tax laws, and more businesses are going to suffer if they do not comply,” he said. “However, there is a technology alignment. Everything came together to give us a perfect time to build a solution like this.”
Tax compliance in Nigeria has long been characterised by complexity, fragmentation, and manual processes. But TaxStreem is positioning itself at the centre of that transition, betting that as compliance becomes stricter, businesses will increasingly turn to AI not just for efficiency, but for survival.
Talking Points
It is notable that TaxStreem is tackling one of the most complex and underserved layers of business operations in Nigeria, tax computation and compliance by embedding intelligence directly into financial workflows.
By positioning itself as an infrastructure layer rather than just another accounting tool, TaxStreem addresses a real gap in the market: the interpretation of transactions and their corresponding tax implications, which remains largely manual for most businesses today.
Its AI engine, which reads and interprets transaction data in real time, could significantly reduce errors and improve compliance, especially as regulatory enforcement tightens ahead of the 2027 e-invoicing mandate.
At Techparley, we see how this approach moves beyond surface-level digitisation. It targets the decision-making layer of finance, where businesses often struggle, not just recording transactions, but understanding what those transactions mean from a tax perspective.
The automated filing feature stands out as a strong differentiator. While many platforms help businesses track finances, few go as far as executing compliance directly on government portals. This could save time, reduce friction, and limit exposure to penalties.
If executed well, TaxStreem has the potential to redefine how businesses approach tax, not as a periodic obligation, but as a continuous, automated process embedded into everyday operations.
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