Naspers to bet on machine learning

Naspers Ltd is looking to invest in machine learning as it seeks to expand following an Amsterdam listing of assets including a stake in Tencent Holdings Ltd.

The South Africa internet and technology group spent about $3 billion on its various ventures around the world last year, including Swiggy and Russian classifieds site Avito BB. Machine learning, a subset of artificial intelligence, is another area of interest, as is online education, executives said on Friday.


“We are interested in investing in machine learning,” chief executive officer Bob van Dijk told shareholders at the annual general meeting in Cape Town. “The amount of data is exploding — last year we collected more data in the world than ever before.”

Naspers has taken stakes in myriad businesses around the world to try and replicate its success with Chinese internet giant Tencent, which it backed as a startup 18 years ago. The growth of that company has helped transform Naspers from its roots as a publisher of South African newspapers, which now makes up about 0.5% of the business.

The spinoff and listing of assets into a new entity known as Prosus NV is partly to help narrow a valuation gap between the Tencent stake and Naspers as a whole, which is about $125 billion vs $99 billion at current prices. The move is also intended to ease Naspers’s dominance of Johannesburg’s stock exchange and attract investors. Shareholders voted to support the move after Friday’s AGM. Naspers will retain a 73% stake in the new company.