Maties Machine Learning (MML) is a seminar series and discussion forum with the goal of bringing together people working on machine learning at Stellenbosch University. We meet roughly once a month for short talks on people’s current work, some ML-related topic, or open discussions. The idea is to get to know what others are working on and to strengthen machine learning research at Stellenbosch.

Upcoming talks

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23 October 2026, 15:10-16:00 in room A3008, General Engineering Building

Candide AI - Building (with) AI for the world’s most beloved estates

CandideAI is the small, AI-first technology team behind a hand-picked portfolio of hospitality and lifestyle estates across South Africa, the UK, Italy and the Netherlands, including Babylonstoren, The Newt in Somerset and Vignamaggio. In this talk, members of their team will share their AI vision and how they take ideas from research to production: from machine learning models that turn fragmented guest, retail and operational data into real insight, to AI products such as a conversational shopping assistant used by real customers today. They’ll walk through the problems they’re solving, the trade-offs they’ve faced, and how working AI-first lets a small team have outsized impact. They’ll also talk openly about what it’s like to build at Candide, and where they are heading next.

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