The most prominent start-up in the United Arab Emirates attracts the favors of the giant Microsoft. The firm has in fact decided to invest no less than 1.5 billion dollars in G42, at the same time strengthening their partnership. In this context, it is expected that Brad Smith, vice president and president of Microsoft, will join the board of directors of the Emirati company.
This merger is not so surprising, the two companies have known each other for several years. In the past year alone, the two companies announced a joint plan to develop AI solutions suitable for the public sector and industry, leveraging partner ecosystem and cloud capabilities from Microsoft. Last September, they struck a deal to introduce sovereign cloud offerings and push AI on the Azure public cloud platform.
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An LLM for Arabic speakers on Microsoft Azure
Finally, in November 2023, Microsoft announced the availability of the large language model – specifically developed for Arabic speakers – Jais from G42 on its Azure AI Cloud Model-as-a-Service offering. For the record, Jais was developed by G42 in partnership with Cerebras, Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), and Med42 LLM, a generative AI model to streamline medical reports.
G42 ready to deliver AI solutions to its customers on a silver platter
Behind this financing lies a certain number of advantages from which the start-up will benefit. G42 will run its AI applications and services on Microsoft Azure – with the startup aiming to migrate its data platform to Azure – and plans to deliver advanced AI solutions “to global public sector and large enterprise customers.” To date, the start-up serves a range of clients in the areas of financial services, healthcare, energy, public administration and education.
The Emirati company and Microsoft will also work together to push AI and digital infrastructure to countries in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa, all with a guarantee of the highest standards in security and confidentiality.
At the same time, the two companies plan – through this partnership – to support the development of a qualified and diverse workforce in the field of AI and to develop qualified profiles in the United Arab Emirates. To do this, an investment of one billion dollars will be allocated to a development fund intended for developers.
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Supporting U.S. Sovereignty Strategy
If the participation turns out to be a minority, the amount invested and the advantages that the start-up will benefit from are one more step towards Microsoft's technological domination on the globe. To achieve this alliance, note that G42 like Microsoft had to give assurances to the governments of the United States and the United Arab Emirates in terms of security. It is also about responding to the strategic needs of Uncle Sam's country: protecting its rear in the face of the threat emanating from the China.
The Gulf States have gradually moved closer to the Middle Kingdom, including the United Arab Emirates, increasing Sino-American tensions a notch. Reuters also reports that, in the face of U.S. concerns about its dealings with Chinese companies, G42 has ceded its investments in China and began the long task of removing Chinese equipment, accepting constraints placed on it by the United States to work with American companies, according to a statement made in February. The Emirati company will notably have to stop using Huawei telecommunications equipment.
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