Abu Dhabi-based artificial intelligence (AI) giant G42 will expand to Africa this year as the continent is an important territory in its geographical expansion plans, Kiril Evtimov, G42's Group Chief Technology Officer, told Zawya in an interview.

The company's strategy includes developing capabilities in financial services solutions, government services and the SME landscape.

"Financial services solutions will definitely be a big part of our portfolio in Africa. It's too early to comment whether it will be in the payment services or micro-lending space," Kiril said.

"Access to mobile phones is a business that is driving the economy in Africa. Our interest is to help the continent deliver capabilities that will be to the benefit of its young population. It starts with improvement of government services and enabling the ecosystem of startups to innovate and develop," he said. 

G42 is building MENA's largest cloud computing infrastructure and has a portfolio of companies that develop and deploy AI solutions across a wide range of industries, including healthcare, financial services, aviation, and oil and gas.

He also said that the recent move to sell its stakes in Chinese technology companies was not an abrupt one. 42XFund, the $10bn technology investment arm of G42, divested from all its investments in China.

"This decision wasn't recent. This decision was made in late 2022. G42 values partnerships tremendously. We won't be able to make progress and meet the aggressive targets independently. The only way to accelerate our roadmap is to partner with technology giants," Kiril said.

"Our partnerships with US technology giants are extremely critical for our ambitious objectives," he said.

G42 has partnered with US technology giants such as Microsoft, Open AI and Cerebras Systems in order to accelerate research into new AI applications across industries, in the UAE and beyond.

(Writing by Seban Scaria seban.scaria@lseg.com; editing by Daniel Luiz)