Western European companies developing personal data technology are to see a key investment boost, in the form of a $66m development fund backed by the Chinese government.
CZ Investments, a private equity fund that the Chinese government has over 10% ownership of, will invest in technologies that leverage personal data across three key areas. These are biotechnology, manufacturing and digital technologies.
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Bringing personal data technology to China
With the potential to provide benefits for businesses and consumers, personal data is becoming increasingly valuable.
The European Commission estimates that it will be worth €1tn by 2020, around 8% of the GDP of the entire European Union.
This value has made personal data technology hugely important for nations keen to stay ahead in the technology space. And for China, this fund is a way to bring Western European personal data technology to the country, aided by CZ Investments’ other major investor TouchStone Capital.
HATDeX’s role
As part of the announcement, Dr Xiao Ma, University of Warwick Senior Fellow and founder of HAT Data Exchange (HATDeX), has been appointed to the investment board.
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By GlobalDataHATDeX makes products to enable businesses to store, process and exchange personal data in a secure, decentralised manner. As a result, it is becoming an increasingly prominent technology provider in the personal data space. Many of the investments the fund makes are expected to leverage HATDeX technologies.
“Dr Ma’s role with CZ Investments will prioritize the collection, use, and utilisation of personal data around the technology end-user, the citizen, to enable new services like personalised products, preventative and on-demand medicine, sophisticated machine learning algorithms, and pervasive IoT,” said HATDeX in a release announcing his appointment.
“Dr Ma is excited to be a part of the new capital deployment and is looking forward to helping European companies to better expand into the Chinese market.”
