1. InstaDeep (Tunisia)

Industry: Healthcare

Business focus: Its platform DeepChain uses reinforcement learning for protein design. InstaDeep continues to operate as a core scientific engine in Africa.

Our Role: Pre-Seed investors. Advised the founders on early product positioning and go-to-market strategy.

Status: Acquired by Germany’s BioNTech for £562 million ($680 million) in 2023, and it remains Africa’s largest software-defined infrastructure exit to date, proving the utility and value of the startup’s AI tech stack.  

MOIC: 196X

2. Paystack (Nigeria)

Industry: Financial Services

Business focus: Online payment gateway for merchants and ecommerce sites across Africa.

Our Role: Pre-Seed investors

Status: Acquired by Stripe for $200 million in October 2020. The deal marked Stripe’s entry into the African continent and helped accelerate online commerce by embedding Paystack’s infrastructure into Stripe’s global network.

Stripe chose to keep Paystack operating independently, allowing it to focus deeply on expanding into key African markets including Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, and Egypt.

Continuing its growth in the region, Paystack acquired Ladder Microfinance Bank, transitioning from a pure payment gateway into a deposit-taking financial institution.

MOIC: 125X

3. Si-Ware Systems (Egypt)

Industry: Semiconductors

Business focus: Si-Ware Systems relevance to AI remains evident in the fabless semiconductor space, where it is providing custom application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) development services as well as standard products in optical micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) technology.

Si-Ware’s NeoSpectra uses a tiny MEMS-based spectrometer that brings laboratory-grade chemical analysis to portable devices. Combined with machine learning (ML), it enables rapid material testing for agriculture, mining, and pharmaceuticals.

Our Role: Pre-Seed investors

Status: Exited our investment via a secondaries transaction during the company’s $9 million Series B round in 2021. In May 2025, the startup’s NeoSpectra business was acquired by BUCHI Labortechnik AG, a Swiss manufacturer of laboratory and industrial equipment, which now manages the platform, including handheld analysers and cloud software. The remaining entity of Si-Ware continues to focus on other technologies, such as high-speed timing chips.

MOIC: 35X

4. InfiniLink (Egypt)

Industry: Semiconductors

Business focus: Designs silicon‑photonics, chiplets, and high‑speed serialiser/deserialiser (SerDes) that move data between chips in AI data centers using light instead of copper.

By delivering very high bandwidth while using much less power than traditional electrical links, its technology helps make large‑scale AI systems faster and more energy‑efficient. InfiniLink is one of the flagbearers in Africa’s emerging fabless semiconductor ecosystem.

Our Role: Seed investors.  

Status: Acquired by GlobalFoundries (GF), a US semiconductor manufacturing plant, in November 2025 for $48 million

MOIC: 4.8X

PHYSICAL BACKBONE INFRASTRUCTURE THAT ENABLE THE DELIVERY AND ADOPTION OF AI AT SCALE

5. Teraco Data Environments (South Africa)

Industry: Data Centers for cloud and AI services

Business focus: Teraco is an African carrier-neutral colocation provider, operating highly connected, network-dense data center campuses that serve a massive and rapidly growing customer base across the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) region

Our Role: Seed investors. Helped conduct a process that identified Digital Realty as a long-term strategic partner and acquirer of Teraco, enabling a consortium of investors that included Berkshire Partners and Permira to divest their stake in the business

Status: Digital Realty, a global data center provider, originally acquired a majority stake (approximately 55%) in Teraco in 2022 in a deal that valued Teraco at roughly $3.5 billion. In June 2026, Digital Realty purchased an additional 16% stake from minority shareholders in Teraco for roughly $650 million, increasing its total equity ownership in the African platform to 77%.  

MOIC: 40X

6. Eaton Towers (Pan African)

Industry: Telecommunications

Business focus: Eaton was a leading independent owner, operator and developer of multitenant communications real estate with a portfolio of approximately 5,500 communications sites across five African markets — Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Burkina Faso and Niger. It leased space and power at its sites to mobile operator and data services companies, typically under ten-year agreements. Its customers included Bharti Airtel, MTN, Vodafone and Orange.

Our Role: Seed Investors. Advised the firm on its pan African expansion strategy, and helped conduct a process that identified American Tower Corporation as an acquirer, engineering a liquidity event that enabled a number of financial firms that owned Eaton to divest their shareholding in the firm, including Capital International, Development Partners International, Ethos Private Equity and Standard Chartered private Equity — which all agreed the sale.

We helped the firm grow from an idea of a few people to become a leader in African shared telecoms infrastructure with approximate annual revenue and EBITDA of $250 million and $150 million respectively, and bottom-line profitability over a 10-year period.

Status: Acquired by American Tower Corporation for $1.85 billion, including the assumption of existing Eaton Towers debt.

The acquisition heavily bolstered American Tower’s footprint in Africa, making it a leading shared telecom infrastructure provider across the region and granting them unique market positions, including establishing them as the sole tower company in Niger and Burkina Faso.

To further consolidate its African market holdings, American Tower also acquired MTN’s minority stakes in joint ventures within Ghana and Uganda following this acquisition.

MOIC: 27X

7. Main One Cable Company

Industry: Telecommunications

Business focus: Main One is a West African data center and connectivity solutions provider, operator of undersea fiber-optic broadband cable network and provider of wholesale broadband internet services, and colocation services . Main One built an undersea 1.92 terabitper-second fiber-optic cable linking landing sites in Accra and Lagos with Portugal for onward connection to London.

Our Role: Advisory & Operations — We provided strategic and operational guidance to Main One as increasing competition reshaped the ICT landscape; as a result, Main One developed high-margin, value-added services such as data centers to diversify its revenue streams.  

Working with one of the core investors, we helped Main One build a governance and management structure that was well suited to respond to the unique challenges of ICT in Africa, including accelerating demand, increasing competition and a shortage of last-mile infrastructure.  

We additionally provided strategic guidance as Main One expanded services beyond its core business of bandwidth provision. As the entrance of new bandwidth providers caused prices to plummet, We and Main One crafted a response strategy that focused on quality rather than competing on price, and on sourcing clients that valued fast, reliable internet access.

As technology operators we saw the potential to create economic value through enhanced efficiencies in the core business of bandwidth provision, and helped Main One develop its data center operations. We helped identify and vet a South African firm to provide engineering, design and project management advice on Main One’s data center construction projects.

Status: Equinix, a global data center operator and provider of colocation and interconnection services acquired Main One in April 2022 for an enterprise value of US$320 million

The transaction served as Equinix’s landmark entry into the African continent. Assets acquired included three operational data centers in Nigeria, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire; a 7,000 km submarine cable network from Portugal to Lagos; and 1,200 km of terrestrial fiber networks across southern Nigeria.

MOIC: Not Applicable to us but we created value and liquidity event through our advisory and operational roles for Main One’s shareholders including AFC, FBN Quest, and others.

TRANSACTION WE DIDN’T CLOSE

8. UNION BANK OF NIGERIA

GOAL: To acquire the bank and use Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to transform it into a pan African financial services super app.

FINANCING: Raised $500 million in acquisition financing from Japanese insurers looking to use banks to distribute insurance products across Africa

WHAT HAPPENED?: We won the technical bid but lost the financial bid.