G42 merges Injazat with G42 Cloud and Inception

The merger creates a potential AI and data services powerhouse

Oct 12, 2023

#UAE #mergers - G42, Abu Dhabi's AI-focused technology holding and investment company, has merged its subsidiaries G42 Cloud, Inception and Injazat, to create Core42, a potential AI and data services powerhouse. Core42 will provide infrastructure, solutions, managed digital services and consulting services, which could prove to be the ideal package for big organisations trying to keep pace with the relentless change driven by artificial intelligence.

SO WHAT? - This is an ambitious move by G42 to create a one-stop shop for the region's largest IT customers. Combining solution sales with cloud services, AI model development, infrastructure, managed services and professional services could provide a compelling proposition for enterprise customers. However, this strategy also has its risks and some of the world's biggest technology companies have struggled with trying to manage such a broad portfolio profitably and yet still drive momentum.

Core42 combines the businesses of G42 Cloud (established by G42 in 2021), Inception (established by G42 in 2018 and recently rebranded from the Inception Institute of Artificial Intelligence to simply 'Inception') and Injazat (acquired by G42 Group in 2020 via a larger equity deal with sovereign wealth fund Mubadala).
G42's vision for the new company is to build a global solutions, services and infrastructure company focused on large-scale enterprise AI and digital transformation delivery. So, effectively a one-stop-shop for large enterprises.
G42 has has created an almost entirely new senior management team, filling Core42's c-level positions with mostly internal senior talent from G42 holding group, G42 Cloud and Inception.
The Core42 management team includes: G42 Group CTO Kiril Evtimov as the new Core42 CEO; G42 Cloud COO Trevor North as Core42 COO; former Microsoft UAE COO and CMO Ihsan Anabtawi joins as CCO; Andrew Jackson, who joined Inception as CEO in April, now becomes Chief AI Officer; G42 Cloud CEO Talal Al Kaissi is the new Chief Product & Global Partnership Officer; Ali Nimer who joined Injazat in April as CCO is now Chief Client and Growth Officer; Martin Yates who joined Injazat in 2022 is Corporate CTO; and Roopal Jobanputra, G42 legal counsel becomes the new company's General Counsel.
G42 will officially launch the new Core42 company and brand at GITEX 2023 next week.

ZOOM OUT - The G42 group has become the mainstay for the Abu Dhabi government's digital transformation, building out government data centres and cloud services, integrating digital systems and introducing cutting-edge AI. The group's interests now span physical data and high performance computing (HPC) infrastructure, data analytics services, cyber-security, healthcare, biotech, geospatial services, applied R&D, plus the development of specialised AI solutions. It's global technology partners are a 'who's who' of the technology industry. G42 also manages a $10 billion venture capital fund focused on global technology scaleups.

IMO - The vision for Core42 seems to have been already labelled by G42 as 'audacious' and its the claim that the new company can seamlessly integrate and manage all the different solutions and services it offers that makes it so.

The proposition is likely to appeal to many of the largest government and private sector enterprise customers in the region. However, trust from such organisations is hardly automatic. Notwithstanding its early leadership position in Abu Dhabi and its rise as a national champion of AI, nor the political influence that comes from powerful investors, it has taken time to build that level of trust in government circles and result in the scale of business that G42 has today.

The trust that Core42 will need to build now is not in its cutting-edge technology or vast resources, but in effective and seamless delivery of complex projects that leverage those technology and resources. By the look of Core42’s new management team, it seems well positioned to do this.

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