Today, Microsoft officials stated that the company will invest $1.5 billion dollars on a new artificial intelligence firm G42 which is based in United Arab Emirates, which will give the tech supergiants a minority share and seat in their company.
Under this partnership, the applications and services of G42 will run on the Azure, the cloud platform of Microsoft which is assigned to deliver advanced artifocial intelligence solutions to international public sector clients and enterprises.
What is G42?
Group 42 Holding or most commonly known as G42 is a Emirati artificial intelligence holding company based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates founded in 2018.
The organization’s main goal is to focus on AI development across various sectors like healthcare, government, finance, oil, hospitality, and aviation.
The chairman of this company is Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan who is the founder of the United Arab Emirates and the national security advisor of UAE controls the company’s policy and initiative while Peng Xiao the former chief of the UAE’s cybersecurity company DarkMatter Group is the CEO of G42.
Before entering into a partnership with Microsoft, G42 partnered with Sinopharm or China National Pharmaceutical Group Corporation (CNPGC) for vaccine trials in 2020.
G42’s strong ties with China concerned the US authorities with many of them stated that ‘the G42 serves as the channel through which sophisticated US technology is diverted to the Chinese companies or the government.’
Due to this reason, the G42 officials decided to cancel their investment in China.
Microsoft on its New Partnership with G42
Brad Smith, the President of Microsoft who is taking a seat on the board of G42 stated that ‘We will combine world-class technology with world-leading standards for safe, trusted, and responsible AI, in close coordination with the governments of both the UAE and the United States.’
According to the above statement, both the companies will combine and perform together to bring digital services and advanced artificial intelligence to the countries in Middle East. Africa and Central Asia.
The partnership comes despite the valiant efforts of the US to crush the technical gains of Beijing by placing four Chinese companies on the blacklist for attempting to purchase artificial intelligence (AI) chips for the Chinese military.
Gina Raimondo, the United States Secretary of Commerce stated ‘When it comes to emerging technology, you cannot be both in China’s camp and our camp.’
Gina Raimondo travelled to UAE twice to discuss about this big partnership and also on other issues.
G42’s Current Investment with Microsoft
After divesting its shares with China in this year, G42 began a huge and lengthy task of removing Chinese hardware and equiment since US officials and authorities are concerned about the company’s relationship with the China.
Both Microsoft and G42 will boost and support the establishment of a $1billion as a fund for the developers and the creators to improve their AI skills in the UAE or any other region.
According to the New York Post, who were the first one to report on this partnership stated that the ‘deal places a series of protections on the AI products shared with G42, including an agreement to strip Chinese gear out of the Emirati firm’s operations. G42 will cease using Huawei telecom equipment, which the U.S. fears could provide a backdoor for Chinese intelligence agencies.’
G42 is familar with Azure cloud services as both of them collaborated last year and the officials of G42 stated that ‘it would use Microsoft’s Azure data centers as part of its AI infrastructure to boost regional adoption.’
