PHOTO
ADIA Head Quarters
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) is ramping up its investments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) as it participated in the $200 million seed round of a US-based firm that operates in life sciences.
Financial details of the investment, conducted through a wholly owned subsidiary of ADIA, have not been disclosed.
Backed by the Moderna-founded Flagship Pioneering, Lila Sciences has also drawn seed capital from Blue Horizon Advisors, an investment firm with offices in the UAE and the UK.
Other investors in the company include US venture capital firms Modi Ventures, March Capital, ARK Venture Fund and General Catalyst.
The funding is expected to support the development of Lila Sciences’ AI platform, autonomous labs, and infrastructure for scaling.
The nearly $1.1 trillion sovereign fund’s recent spate of AI investments has seen ADIA snap up a $1 billion stake in the US data analytics software company Qlik in a deal that valued the company at $10 billion last November.
A wholly owned subsidiary of the sovereign fund also made a minority investment of $500 million in AlphaGen, a power infrastructure portfolio in January. The investment remains subject to regulatory approvals and is expected to close in the first half of 2025. The portfolio is one of the largest independent power portfolios in the US, with over 11 GWs of critical power assets that will aid ADIA’s investment in the development of AI-driven data centres.
According to LSEG data, ADIA has also been linked to an investor group, comprising ChrysCapital Invest Advisors India Pvt Ltd, a unit of Chryscapital Management Co, Hexaware Technologies, a unit of CA Magnum Holdings, Altimetrik Corp, a unit of TPG Inc and Mphasis in the acquisition of an undisclosed majority interest in Slk Software Pvt Ltd, a Bangalore-based provider of custom computer programming services.
The terms of the transaction have not disclosed, but the transaction is said to be valued at estimated at 56 billion Indian rupees ($646 million).
(Reporting by Bindu Rai, editing by Brinda Darasha)
(Editing by Brinda Darasha; brinda.darasha@lseg.com)
