With cloud spend persevering with to surge, tech firms are scrambling to fulfill demand for the mandatory infrastructure, with the rising want for AI compute solely including gas to the hearth.
By the use of instance, Microsoft and BlackRock have created a $30 billion fund to help new knowledge facilities and vitality infrastructure for the burgeoning AI growth, and Meta is planning a brand new $10 billion subsea cable that can span your complete globe. Google, for its half, just lately introduced Umoja, the primary subsea fiber-optic cable to attach Africa and Australia — and it’s becoming a member of a $90 million funding spherical into Cassava Applied sciences, one of many accomplice firms concerned within the Umoja mission.
With its first African knowledge heart operational for a yr, amongst different infrastructure initiatives such because the Equiano subsea cable, Google confirmed to TechCrunch that it’s now taking a direct fairness stake in Cassava, although it didn’t present touch upon the rationale behind the funding. Nevertheless, it’s clear that it’s trying to enhance infrastructure throughout the continent. Certainly, Africa has been hit by widespread outages all through 2024, which have been attributed to defective undersea cables, so it is sensible that Google would need to fund efforts to bolster connectivity for shoppers and companies which may need to use its companies.
Cassava introduced $310 million in funding general, although $220 million of that’s within the type of a credit score facility for considered one of its subsidiaries. The $90 million fairness tranche included investments from the U.S. federal authorities’s Worldwide Improvement Finance Company (DFC); Finnish growth finance firm Finnfund; and Google itself. The funding will assist Cassava: “… strengthen its stability sheet, drive sustainable worthwhile development, and cement its place as a world expertise firm of African heritage,” based on a press launch that additionally detailed a broader reorganization of the corporate.
“It’s a pivotal milestone that we anticipate to unlock immense worth and catalyze the additional enlargement of our digital infrastructure and companies to bridge the digital divide on the continent,” Cassava CEO and President Hardy Pemhiwa (pictured above) mentioned.
Liquid property
African telecommunication firm Econet spun out Cassava in 2021, serving as a standalone enterprise for Econet’s varied digital companies and infrastructure initiatives spanning knowledge facilities, fiber broadband networks, renewable vitality, cloud, cybersecurity, and extra. Though Africa is a significant focus for Cassava, it additionally operates throughout different “key development markets” together with the Center East, India, and Latin America.
Amongst its enterprise items is Liquid Clever Applied sciences, which labored with Google to construct the terrestrial section of Umoja; the cable begins in Kenya, and snakes by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, earlier than concluding its land journey in South Africa.
Individually, one other of Cassava’s enterprise items, Liquid C2, this yr introduced a partnership with Google and Anthropic to deliver “superior cloud, cybersecurity options, and generative AI” companies to firms throughout Africa. This constituted a part of Google’s earlier dedication to speculate $1 billion in Africa’s digital economic system.
“Companies are more and more turning to generative AI to drive operational efficiencies, enhance the client expertise, and empower their staff like by no means earlier than,” Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian mentioned of its partnership with Liquid C2 on the time. “This partnership has the chance to remodel how African companies serve and interact their clients as we offer them a basis for innovation.”
