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 fireplace.
By means of instance, Microsoft and BlackRock have created a $30 billion fund to help new information facilities and vitality infrastructure for the burgeoning AI growth, and Meta is planning a brand new $10 billion subsea cable that may span the complete globe. Google, for its half, 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 associate firms concerned within the Umoja challenge.
With its first African information middle operational for a 12 months, 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. Nonetheless, it’s clear that it’s seeking 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 wish to fund efforts to bolster connectivity for shoppers and companies that may wish to use its providers.
Cassava introduced $310 million in funding total, although $220 million of that’s within the type of a credit score facility for one among its subsidiaries. The $90 million fairness tranche included investments from the U.S. federal authorities’s Worldwide Growth Finance Company (DFC); Finnish growth finance firm Finnfund; and Google itself. The funding will assist Cassava: “… strengthen its steadiness sheet, drive sustainable worthwhile progress, and cement its place as a world expertise firm of African heritage,” in keeping with a press launch that additionally detailed a broader reorganization of the corporate.
“It’s a pivotal milestone that we count on to unlock immense worth and catalyze the additional enlargement of our digital infrastructure and providers to bridge the digital divide on the continent,” Cassava CEO and President Hardy Pemhiwa (pictured above) mentioned.
Liquid belongings
African telecommunication firm Econet spun out Cassava in 2021, serving as a standalone enterprise for Econet’s varied digital providers and infrastructure initiatives spanning information facilities, fiber broadband networks, renewable vitality, cloud, cybersecurity, and extra. Though Africa is a serious focus for Cassava, it additionally operates throughout different “key progress 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 phase of Umoja; the cable begins in Kenya, and snakes by means of 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 12 months introduced a partnership with Google and Anthropic to carry “superior cloud, cybersecurity options, and generative AI” providers to firms throughout Africa. This constituted a part of Google’s earlier dedication to take a position $1 billion in Africa’s digital financial 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 rework how African companies serve and interact their prospects as we offer them a basis for innovation.”
