Andile Ngcaba’s Convergence Partners Investments, has been rebranded to Solcon Capital and spun out of the group as it aims to strengthen its deep tech portfolio.
Founded by Ngcaba, who serves as chair, Convergence Partners specialises in digital infrastructure investments, having raised $296m (R5.124bn) for its third fund, in January. This has been earmarked for opportunities across Sub-Saharan Africa.
While Convergence Partners will continue to focus on private equity through its digital infrastructure funds, Solcon will concentrate on international “deep tech” investments in areas such as generative artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLM), synthetic data and gig data, cybersecurity, and quantum computing across SA, India and Southeast Asia.
The past half-year has seen much investment and interest in AI, driven by the explosion of ChatGPT, a chatbot launched by AI non-profit OpenAI in November 2022. It is capable of generating human-like text and has a range of applications including translation.
The platform has proved to be popular in its relatively short lifespan, reaching a million users much faster than Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook and other social media sites. It has received a reported $10bn in backing from Silicon Valley giant Microsoft, which has in turn prompted others in the investment community to also invest in the space.
Founded in 2003, the now Solcon is looking to position itself as a leader in “innovation and disruptive solutions”.
Ngcaba is set to continue his work with Convergence Partners.
To spearhead the growth of Solcon, Pramod Venkatesh has been appointed as CEO with effect from August 1 2023.
The company says Venkatesh brings extensive experience in managing and building deep tech companies, acquired from time in Silicon Valley. He previously served as the group chief technology officer of inq, where he was responsible for developing AI, software-defined networking and edge computing products and solutions.
The company is developing an AI-based investment management platform called Solcon 360, which will be unveiled during its 20th anniversary celebrations in October. The company said the platform will enable investment companies to effectively manage pipelines and portfolio operations among a host of services. In addition, it will leverage its own LLM to capitalise on generative AI and provide custom models tailored to the investment needs of companies.
In a statement Ngcaba said Solcon has a two-decade history of innovation and disruption through its investments in undersea cables, long-haul fibre and big data.
“In this new chapter, Solcon Capital will be known as one of the leading global deep tech investment companies. We are excited to bring on-board Pramod Venkatesh, with extensive experience in Silicon Valley and expertise in building deep tech companies. Venkatesh will execute Solcon Capital’s 2035 strategy. With Venkatesh at the helm, we will continue to disrupt deep tech and are excited to show what the future holds.”
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