Share is a bandwidth marketplace that lets anyone build their own programmable internet network. The company started in Kenya, where it built a network connecting fiber operators, data centers, internet exchanges, and subsea cable capacity, and used it to help local ISPs bring faster, more reliable internet to homes and businesses. That network is now the foundation of a neutral marketplace where the companies that own the internet’s infrastructure and the networks that need capacity can trade routes on demand. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Share Co-Founder Luis Munoz Aycart to learn more about the company’s model, technology, expansion strategy, and efforts to increase internet access across Africa.
Luis Aycart’s Background
When asked about his background, Aycart shared:
I’m originally from Spain and spent over a decade in New York before co-founding Share with my brother Jose and our longtime best friend Omar.
We came from different educational backgrounds- philosophy, business, and socioeconomic development- and had been wanting to build together for years.
Omar and Jose were partners in their previous startup, and we all came together with a similar premise: Africa has the highest-yielding opportunity and the most overlooked.
We had been wanting to create a solution in the world that brought more than a simple marginal impact, making infrastructure and internet access the unlock.
Before Share, our team had built and fundraised startups in the US in highly regulated, innovation-resistant industries, healthcare specifically. We knew what it took to navigate complexity and push through.
We also brought experience managing large-scale teams at institutions like LVMH.
But honestly, what’s validated the mission as much as anything is who it’s attracted: we’ve been able to bring in people who’ve led some of the largest telcos on the continent and built data center infrastructure for the likes of Google.
The opportunity, mission, and technical challenge are big enough that the best people in the industry want to be a part of it.
How Share Started
When asked how the idea for the company came together, Aycart explained:
When we first moved to Kenya, we actually planned to build an ISP. Once we started talking to people on the ground, it became clear the issue wasn’t a lack of infrastructure. There’s already a huge amount of fiber, subsea cables, and data centers across the region.
The problem was that access to that infrastructure was fragmented, which makes it hard for smaller ISPs to buy, route, and use it effectively. With everything that was built, 600 million people across Africa still remained unconnected. The opportunity was there; the infrastructure was there.
So instead of becoming another ISP, we built the part that connects everything together. We connected fiber operators, data centers, and internet exchanges, and put that capacity in the hands of local ISPs.
The deeper we went, the clearer something else became. Fragmentation isn’t only an African problem. It’s how the telecom industry works everywhere: prices are opaque, contracts are rigid, a new route takes months to light up, and nobody coordinates the path end to end. Africa simply pays the highest price for it, in the number of people still offline.
The largest tech companies hit the same wall and solved it by building their own global networks. That took billions of dollars and years of work. Everyone else still gets whatever their provider decides.
That’s what Share is built to change. We’re a neutral bandwidth marketplace that lets anyone build their own programmable internet network in seconds.
Favorite Memory
When asked about his favorite memory working for the company so far, Aycart said:
My favorite memory remains right now.
Early days in a startup are exciting, but they’re also full of uncertainty; you’re running on conviction more than proof.
What I’m experiencing now is different. After more than a year on the ground in Kenya, understanding the market from the inside, we’ve seen the demand validate everything we believed.
What makes this stage special is seeing two things happen at once. ISPs on the network are upgrading their customers to faster, more reliable internet, and households and businesses are coming online because of it. And what we built in Kenya has shown us that the same model works far beyond Kenya.
We’re building physical and digital infrastructure together, and that combination is what lets us turn a real network into a marketplace anyone can plug into.
Being at this inflection point, where everything we built quietly is now visibly working, is a great stage to be in.
Core Products And Features
When asked about Share’s core products and features, Aycart detailed:
At its core, Share is a bandwidth marketplace. On one side are sellers: fiber operators, IP transit providers, data centers, internet exchanges and content networks. Many of them have capacity sitting underused. Share gives them a way to sell it without the complexity of finding and managing every buyer themselves. On the other side are buyers. Today those are ISPs, who come to Share for bandwidth capacity without long-term commitments, and use it to deliver faster, more reliable internet to their subscribers. Next come enterprises, individuals and AI agents that need a specific route for minutes at a time.
In between, Share runs three layers: routing nodes, where buyers and sellers physically connect, typically in major data centers or our own points of presence; an API to provision routes; and a platform where partners manage usage, plans, and payments.
What makes it different from how connectivity is bought today is that it’s programmable. Buyers don’t just get connectivity; they shape it: the route, the performance, how long they need it, and how they pay for it. They pay for what they use, at any size and for any duration, and the marketplace is built so routes go live in seconds rather than weeks.
The result is a neutral, shared network that no single player could justify building alone, open to anyone who needs it. Share enables anyone to build their own programmable internet network in seconds.
Building Trust In A Legacy Industry
When asked about recent challenges in the sector and how Share has addressed them, Aycart explained:
The biggest challenge has been explaining where we fit, because we don’t compete with or replace ISPs, and we don’t compete with the infrastructure owners either.
Telecom is a legacy industry, and historically, large operators compete directly with the smaller ISPs. So when you introduce a new approach like this, trust takes time to build.
We built this trust by being on the ground. Meeting partners in person, working through real use cases, and proving that we are an addition to the equation, not competition.
That credibility couldn’t happen remotely.
Our promise to the networks we work with is simple: we only grow if they grow; therefore, we do everything in our power to enhance their business.
When the barrier to entry is so low, networks are more keen to test it out.
How The Technology Has Evolved
When asked how Share’s technology has evolved since launching, Aycart said:
Early on the priority was simple: get infrastructure in the ground and prove the network and the model worked. What’s evolving is the full stack, divided between the physical and digital technology. On the physical side, we’ve built a real network in Kenya: more than 12,000 km of fiber in the ecosystem, presence in more than 10 data centers, including micro PoPs we built ourselves, and access to 7 subsea cables. Some of those routes we built; most belong to sellers on the marketplace, and both are available to buyers.
We run on open-networking hardware, which means carrier-grade performance at a fraction of traditional CAPEX, with no vendor lock-in.
On the digital side, we’ve built the API and platform that ISPs use today to connect their existing systems, manage plans and users, and process payments. That same layer is what makes the network programmable: a route can be requested, provisioned, and paid for through software.
Key Company Milestones
When asked about some of Share’s most significant milestones, Aycart highlighted:
- Expanding across Nairobi and Mombasa within the first year
- Securing partnerships with 16 infrastructure providers
- Building a network footprint that reaches 8 million people
- Bringing 12+ providers live on the network
- Onboarding and activating thousands of households and businesses
- Turning the Kenyan network into the first region of a global bandwidth marketplace
What’s been most meaningful to us is how quickly adoption picked up once partners saw the model working and the value it provided. Every type of player we’ve worked with, from fiber operators to small ISPs, has found a reason to plug in.
Customer Success Story
When asked to share a specific customer success story, Aycart said:
One of the most consistent success stories we see is ISPs being able to dramatically improve their service quality almost immediately after joining the network. In many cases, users go from limited, expensive, and unreliable access to high-speed connectivity that’s both faster and more reliable.
One of our first customers upgraded his internet packages upon joining Share, and within a day visiting a building in Mombasa he acquired 96% of apartments, all net new users onto his network.
That’s what the marketplace looks like at street level: a local operator with access to better capacity, and a building full of people getting a better connection.
Funding And Growth
When asked about funding and revenue metrics, Aycart explained:
We’re venture-backed and raised a pre-seed round in early 2025, followed by a larger round in April 2026 led by Greenfield Capital.
On the revenue side, Share earns a transaction fee on what runs through the marketplace.
As of May 2026, we had over 50 networks in onboarding stages and over 100k end-users in the pipeline to be connected. In the first three months after connecting networks, our end-user base grew 100% month over month.
Total Addressable Market
When asked about the total addressable market Share is pursuing, Aycart explained:
Africa’s connectivity gap is the clearest place to start. 600 million people across the continent are still offline, and Africa has the lowest internet penetration of any region. Closing that gap means moving far more capacity to far more networks than the current system can coordinate.
But the market Share is built for goes beyond any one region. Any business or network that needs a specific path across the internet is a potential buyer, and every operator with capacity is a potential seller.
Today, that wholesale connectivity is bought through opaque pricing and long, fixed contracts. Only the largest tech companies have escaped that by building their own networks. A marketplace opens the same option to everyone else.
Competitive Differentiation
When asked what differentiates Share from its competition, Aycart said:
Share is not an ISP, nor a traditional infrastructure provider. We’re a neutral marketplace.
We don’t compete with the sellers or the buyers on the network. We sit between them and make it easy for them to trade:
- Sellers with capacity that’s sitting underused
- Buyers with demand but limited, slow or expensive access
Instead of spending years and billions rebuilding the whole system, the way the largest tech companies did for themselves, we’re making the infrastructure that’s already there programmable and open to anyone.
Future Goals
When discussing Share’s future goals, Aycart explained:
Near term, the focus is deepening the network in Kenya and expanding into new markets: Uganda, South Africa and Nigeria, and into Europe.
Every new market follows the same playbook. We deploy routing nodes in data centers, connect local sellers, and open the marketplace to local buyers.
Long term, the goal is a global marketplace where anyone, from an ISP in Mombasa to a company on another continent, can build their own programmable internet network.
Expanding Internet Access Across Africa
When invited to discuss another topic, Aycart concluded:
Africa is the youngest and fastest-growing population in the world, yet 600 million people still don’t have access to the internet. Many of those who are connected pay more for slower, less reliable service than people in most other parts of the world. One thing that’s widely misunderstood is how the internet actually works in markets like this. The issue isn’t a lack of infrastructure; it’s access. There’s already significant investment in fiber, subsea cables, and data centers, but it’s fragmented and difficult to use.
Kenya taught us that when you coordinate that capacity, performance can improve dramatically without building everything new. It also taught us that the same problem exists everywhere, which is why we’re building Share as a global marketplace, with Africa as where it started.
That’s also been an important part of how investors think about the business. We’re not taking on the cost and time of building all the infrastructure ourselves. We’re helping existing infrastructure get used more effectively. That gives us room to grow without the same capital burden, and the marketplace becomes more useful as more sellers and buyers join.
And the impact goes well beyond Africa. As more people come online, it changes who gets to participate in the global economy. This is where the next wave of founders, creators, and ideas will come from. That’s why expanding access matters so much.
