Led by $600m private equity deal with MyHeritage, Middle East and Africa’s technology industry saw a rise of 27.13% in artificial intelligence deal activity during Q1 2021, when compared to the last four-quarter average, according to GlobalData’s deals database.
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A total of 41 artificial intelligence deals worth $1.27bn were announced for the region during Q1 2021, against the last four-quarter average of 32.25 deals.
Of all the deal types, venture financing saw most activity in Q1 2021 with 32 deals, representing a 78.05% share for the region.
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By GlobalDataIn second place was M&A with five deals, followed by private equity deals with four transactions, respectively capturing a 12.2% and 9.8% share of the overall artificial intelligence deal activity for the quarter.
In terms of value of artificial intelligence deals, private equity was the leading category in Middle East and Africa’s technology industry with $737.57m, followed by venture financing deals totalled $535.95m.
Middle East and Africa technology industry artificial intelligence deals in Q1 2021: Top deals
The top five technology artificial intelligence deals accounted for a 77.3% share of the overall value during Q1 2021.
The combined value of the top five artificial intelligence deals stood at $984.57m, against the overall value of $1.27bn recorded for the quarter.
The top five technology industry artificial intelligence deals of Q1 2021 tracked by GlobalData were:
1) Francisco Partners Management, Gigi Levy, Gilad Japhet, HP Beteiligungs and Yuval Rakavy’s $600m private equity deal with MyHeritage
2) The $137.57m private equity deal for 62.5% stake with E&M Computing by FIMI Opportunity Funds
3) Bessemer Venture Partners, BlueRed Partners, Dynamic Loop Capital, Insight Partners, New Era Capital Partners, Pitango Venture Capital and Verizon Ventures’ $107m venture financing of Optibus
4) The $75m venture financing deal with Earnix by Insight Partners, Israel Growth Partners, Jerusalem Venture Partners and Vintage Investment Partners
5) Expon Capital, Intel Capital, Koch Disruptive Technologies, NVIDIA, SoftBank Ventures Asia, State of Mind Ventures, Sweetwood Capital, Viola Ventures, Western Digital Capital and Xilinx Technology Ventures’ venture financing with Pliops for $65m.