In 2023, co-founders Karim Jouini and Jihed Othmani sold cost management startup Expensya to Swedish procurement software company Medius, widely considered one of the biggest acquisitions of African startups. According to some sources, the total was just over $120 million, but the terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Successful success comes as both founders have pledged entrepreneurial spirit and never intend to do another startup again, Jouini will become the CTO role in the merged software company, with other acquisitions spanning three continents.
But the pull of a wave of new technology (generic AI) and the idea that they might be able to build something bigger has brought them back.
The two have now co-founded Thunder Code, an AI-powered software testing platform. This told TechCrunch that it already has $9 million in seed funding.
“Expensya was so hard, I promised I wouldn’t do another company, so that’s pretty crazy,” Jouini told TechCrunch. “But I think it’s like when people have two kids, they forget how difficult the first one is. This new venture is already very intense in under six months, but we’re fired. I’m sure this is unicorn material.”
Juini says that Medius’s transition to being head of technology rekindled a spark he missed as the frontman for Expensya a few years later. When he oversaw the consolidation of six companies across three continents, he saw firsthand how AI reshapes the software industry. Testing was a universal issue, regardless of product, even a seeded perception of Thundercode ideas.
Thunder Code slowly tackles manual testing using an “agent” equipped with AI that mimics a human tester. These agents simulate QA processes, catch subtle UI and UX issues, and learn from feedback.
Determined to avoid Expensya’s early failures, Jouini prioritized speed. “We shipped our first MVP in week 6, and now, Expensya has become much more solid in the product in six months than its fourth year,” he said. This reflects the widely held belief in startup land where fast feedback surpasses full planning.
Thundercode has already gained traction and is paying for clients and pilot programs in the US, Canada, France and Tunisia. The company is partnering with delivery managers, QA shops and developer teams to test and ship faster. The current focus is web application testing with plans to expand to mobile, desktop and API testing by the second half of 2025.
In addition to speed, Zuini’s second rodeo also applies other hard-earned lessons from Expensya, such as focusing on core features and gaining the best talent as quickly as possible. He is uninterested about early dilutions as it relates to investments in top talent. “Many African entrepreneurs are scared to dilute capital because they want to keep it at 100%. I think it’s a good value when you create a unicorn while diluting yourself,” he said.
However, Giuini believes that AI will generate 10x more values for fewer people, reflecting a broader emotional shift towards a wider AI-powered team.
Nevertheless, Zuwini acknowledges that the jump from expense management to software developer tools has been a dramatic leap despite the familiar problematic points. However, he considers it a larger, more complex market, with forecasts to exceed $100 billion by 2027. He believes that the rapid execution of Thunder Code with AI will give it an edge over similar new agent products.
Headquartered in Paris in its Tunis office, Thundercode joins an increasingly crowded market of all startups trying to do the same thing as participants, from Uipath to Jetify to startups like Nova AI.
His co-founder Othmani will help bring in deep expertise in the generation AI that ChatGpt built Expensya’s internal AI tools several years ago that made waves. Their complementary skills and six months of cries raise $9 million, and Thundercode moves fast and gains market share, Juini said.
The funding round includes familiar faces from the cap table at Expensya, including Silicon Badia and Django Capital, as well as strategic angels like Titan Seed Fund and Roxanne Varza (Director of Station F) and Karim Beguir, CEO of Africa’s biggest AI startup. The former and current Expensya employees who acquired cash during the acquisition are also invested. “Some of our investors are actually employees of Expensya and we are pleased that it worked that way,” Jouini said.