AI Buys Cars: Inside WeBuyCars with Dr Wynand Beukes

At a glance
In one line	WeBuyCars now prices and buys cars with its own machine learning engine, and Deputy CEO Dr Wynand Beukes built it.
Key number	Over 2,800 vehicles bought by AI agents, without a human pricing a single one of them.
Who should read this	Operators putting AI into a real business, and anyone watching what happens when software sets the market price.
Bottom line	Join the live conversation on 10 September to hear what he automates, and what he will not hand over.
Read time	2 min

I think WeBuyCars is one of the most impressive companies in South Africa. Not specifically because of the industry it is in, but because of its business model and its focus on using technology.

Which is why I am super excited to get the opportunity to interview Dr Wynand Beukes, their Deputy CEO and Group Chief Digital Officer.

The days of spreadsheets have long gone

WeBuyCars started out tracking two thousand sales a month in a spreadsheet. It now powers an absolute juggernaut in the second-hand auto industry with the latest tech and machine learning models, designed to optimise the customer experience.

The numbers give you the scale. Around 180,000 cars bought and sold a year, and over 2,800 vehicles bought using AI agents, without a human pricing a single one of them. Dr Beukes joined as head of digital in 2018, built that engine, and stepped up to Deputy CEO in January.

Price taker to price maker

So I am hoping I can get him to spill the beans on how exactly he uses AI to value more than a million vehicles a month, and to determine the optimal buy and sell price across that volume.

Supported by

Silicon Overdrive

Silicon Overdrive Founders Series

An AWS Premier Partner running cloud infrastructure for South African businesses: architecting, migration, security and compliance, monitoring and cost optimisation. They also invoice in rand and can arrange proof-of-concept credits.

See their AWS services→

Upcoming Virtual Event

AI Buys Cars: Inside WeBuyCars

Thursday, 10 September 2026

With Wynand Beukes, WeBuyCars

What we will dig into

How you price an asset when you are the price maker rather than the price taker
How you keep the buyer and the seller happy, when I was always taught that the best price in any trade leaves both parties slightly upset
The advance of Chinese brands, now nearly one in five new sales, and the pressure that puts on the second-hand market
Whether a South American company called Kavak is defining a new business model for the sector, and where electric vehicles fit
Their plans for agentic AI and automation

Jeez, that is a lot to squeeze into an hour.

Anyway, I hope you can join. And if you cannot, register anyway. You will at least get the recording. Thursday 10 September, 12:00 SAST, 11:00 UK.

Col

Part of the AWS Founders Series, produced in partnership with Silicon Overdrive and Amazon Web Services.