Naspers and Prosus NV Chief Executive Officer Fabricio Bloisi said the technology investor has close to $20 billion (R370 billion) to spend and is ready to grow in Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bloisi runs both Amsterdam-based Prosus and Naspers Ltd., its South African parent, and the companies already hold significant stakes in European companies including Germany\u2019s Delivery Hero SE. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still, most of its deals in recent months have been in historically higher-growth markets, such as an initial public offering in India and a $1.7 billion deal for a travel agency in Brazil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe need to invest substantially more here to put Europe in this race and not to keep looking for an outsider,\u201d Bloisi said in a Bloomberg TV in an interview at the World Economic Forum on Thursday. \u201cOur ecosystem in Europe is ready to grow, and we are ready to invest.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bloisi was promoted to the CEO role last year and has been charged with finding new sources of growth after an early investment in Chinese video game behemoth Tencent Holdings Ltd. ended up dominating the company\u2019s books and skewing its market value. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said Prosus is ready to invest closer to home and called President Donald Trump\u2019s moves to make the US a superpower in artificial intelligence a \u201cwake up call\u201d for Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn Davos last year, the big thing was, \u2018How we can avoid moving too fast on AI?\u2019,\u201d he said. \u201cThe Trump administration has moved the narrative to, \u2018We are going to move faster than anyone else.\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump this week rescinded President Joe Biden\u2019s AI safety measures and announced a $500 billion AI infrastructure joint venture led by SoftBank Group Corp., OpenAI and Oracle Corp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prosus is also interested in seeking partners in the infrastructure around European AI, Bloisi said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prosus, through Naspers, made a blockbuster investment in Chinese game-maker Tencent in 2001, when it paid $34 million for a 50% stake. Today, it owns about a quarter of the company, which has a total market value of about $450 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cProsus\u2019s play is not China,\u201d Bloisi said. \u201cProsus\u2019s play is a shareholder of a Chinese company. But where we invest and where we want to grow is in Europe, India, Latin America, Africa, and that\u2019s where we are investing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Naspers and Prosus NV Chief Executive Officer Fabricio Bloisi said the technology investor has close to $20 billion to spend and is ready to grow in Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":785062,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[21523,107,15103],"class_list":["post-808306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-fabricio-bloisi","tag-naspers","tag-prosus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=808306"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":808309,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808306\/revisions\/808309"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/785062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}