With cloud spend persevering with to surge, tech firms are scrambling to satisfy demand for the required infrastructure, with the rising want for AI compute solely including gas to the hearth.
By approach of instance, Microsoft and BlackRock have created a $30 billion fund to assist 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 the whole globe. Google, for its half, not too long ago 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 Technologies, one of many companion 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. However, it’s clear that it’s seeking to enhance infrastructure throughout the continent. Indeed, 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 customers 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 International Development Finance Corporation (DFC); Finnish improvement 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 worldwide know-how 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 count on to unlock immense worth and catalyze the additional growth of our digital infrastructure and providers to bridge the digital divide on the continent,” Cassava CEO and President Hardy Pemhiwa (pictured above) stated.
Liquid property
African telecommunication firm Econet spun out Cassava in 2021, serving as a standalone enterprise for Econet’s varied digital providers and infrastructure initiatives spanning knowledge facilities, fiber broadband networks, renewable vitality, cloud, cybersecurity, and extra. Although Africa is a significant focus for Cassava, it additionally operates throughout different “key progress markets” together with the Middle East, India, and Latin America.
Among its enterprise models is Liquid Intelligent Technologies, which labored with Google to construct the terrestrial phase of Umoja; the cable begins in Kenya, and snakes by way of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, earlier than concluding its land journey in South Africa.
Separately, one other of Cassava’s enterprise models, Liquid C2, this yr introduced a partnership with Google and Anthropic to deliver “superior cloud, cybersecurity options, and generative AI” providers to firms throughout Africa. This constituted a part of Google’s earlier dedication to speculate $1 billion in Africa’s digital economic system.
“Businesses are more and more turning to generative AI to drive operational efficiencies, enhance the shopper expertise, and empower their workers like by no means earlier than,” Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian stated of its partnership with Liquid C2 on the time. “This partnership has the chance to remodel how African companies serve and have interaction their prospects as we offer them a basis for innovation.”
