An exclusive investment network founded by tech alumni in Southeast Asia expands to support and fuel the vibrant African startup ecosystem.
SINGAPORE, Oct. 11, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — XA Network, a leading investment network founded by tech alumni in Southeast Asia, today announced its expansion into Africa with the launch of XA Africa. The move underscores the network’s vision and commitment to fostering innovation and supporting promising startups globally.

XA Africa is founded by a trio of experienced tech professionals:
Nitin Gajria, former MD of Google Sub-Saharan AfricaJason Scott, venture capitalist and an architect of the Black Founders Fund at GoogleMarek Dawidowicz, current Marketing Director at YouTube and South African native”Founders of technology startups in Africa are uniquely placed to solve some of Africa’s most profound challenges and unlock its greatest opportunities. We see the foray of XA Network into Africa as a natural progression, allowing us to connect amazing founders to experienced and expert operators from the tech industry”, says Nitin Gajria, Co-Founder of XA Africa.
XA Africa aims to connect exceptional African tech founders with seasoned investors and industry experts, primarily from global and regional technology companies, to provide not just capital but also the guidance and support needed to scale their ventures. The newly established XA Africa has already made notable investments in promising African startups, including:
Crop2Cash (Nigeria)BuuPass (Kenya)Kaya (South Africa)Talamus Health (Ghana)”We are excited to have XA network on board because of their strong network of experts who are open to listening and helping. They’ve introduced us to advisors from Expedia and truly understand the dynamics of emerging markets, making them a valuable investor.” – Sonia Kabra & Wyclife Omondi – Founders of BuuPass
“Partnering with XA Network has been a game-changer for our company. Their strategic guidance and network have opened doors to new opportunities, and we’re excited to see the impact of our collaboration continue to unfold. We’re grateful for their trust in our vision.” – Michael Ogundare – CEO of Crop2Cash
Since its inception six years ago, XA Network has established itself as a significant player in the Southeast Asian startup ecosystem, making nearly 100 investments in the region, and consistent ranked as #1 investment network in the region. XA Network comprises senior leaders from prominent global and regional technology companies and notable company founders. This approach distinguishes XA Network, enabling it to offer portfolio companies unparalleled guidance and support from experienced industry operators.
We also see an opportunity to build a stronger bridge between ecosystems in Africa and Southeast Asia along the way. In fact, this investment hypothesis has already been proven across some of the African founders we are currently supporting.”, Mr Gajria added.
The XA Africa team will be hosting their first public Demo Day webinar on Thursday November 7, 1-2pm GMT+1, where Africa focused investors can meet and invest in four founding companies and learn more about XA Africa. Click here to register for the event.
For more information, please visit https://xanetwork.co/
For media queries, please contact: Carmelita Lumempouw-Didoné[email protected]
Logo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2527115/XA_Africa_Logo.jpg

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/xa-network-expands-to-africa-with-launch-of-xa-africa-backed-by-tech-veterans-302273341.html

MAS-licensed Arta Finance launches in Singapore and internationallyArta announces partnerships with Wio Invest for its Wealth-as-a-service offering for banks and financial institutions globallyArta unveils Arta AI Copilot – a number of AI-enhanced experiences on its wealth platformArta welcomes Ralph Hamers as external advisorSINGAPORE, Oct. 11, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Fast-growing digital wealth management platform Arta Finance today launched globally. Arta’s platform is now open to accredited investors in Singapore and to international investors open to managing their wealth in Singapore – a global wealth hub where an expected 1.6 million offshore investors are expected to manage $4.8 trillion in assets by 2028. The international launch follows Arta’s successful debut in the US in October 2023.

Arta today also took a major step on its B2B journey with the announcement that Abu Dhabi’s Wio Invest would be the first of many to integrate the Arta wealth-as-a-service platform into their digital platform, to create a new wealth management offering for its clients in the Middle East, pending regulatory approval. Wio Invest, a forward-thinking Middle Eastern fintech, is regulated by the Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA) and backed by Abu Dhabi Development Company (ADQ), a prominent institution.
Arta’s wealth platform offers a curated deal flow that includes private investments from exclusive fund managers, intelligent public market strategies, and innovative structured products, without the sales pressure, opaque pricing and manual processes found in many other financial institutions.
Commenting on the international launch, Arta CEO Caesar Sengupta said: “Arta is at the intersection of some powerful trends, including the personalisation and democratisation of wealth management, the huge growth and opportunity in private market investing, and the use of AI to create capabilities that have previously only been the preserve of the ultra-wealthy. We are now taking a major leap forward with our international launch and can’t wait to bring the Arta wealth platform and AI Copilot to the global community in the months and years ahead.”
The ‘wealth-as-a-service’ platform for banks and financial institutions is a new B2B offering by Arta. It was done with support from the venture building team of the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), which worked closely with Arta to incubate this offering during the early stages of the concept. This cloud-based platform empowers partner banks to serve their clients better and meet evolving demands with faster time-to-market for innovative wealth management products, services, and technology. Banks can choose from integrating Arta AI Copilot capabilities, to embedding Arta’s investment solutions into their platforms, to fully white-labelling the Arta platform — enhancing their digital capabilities and unlocking growth in new wealth segments.
To help integrate a cloud and AI-native wealth platform into legacy systems at partner banks, Arta is also announcing partnerships with leading cloud provider Google Cloud and global management and technology consultancy Capco to provide solutions for banks looking to adopt Arta’s technology.
Amanda Ong, Head of International Expansion commented: “The launch of the B2B business is an extension of Arta’s mission, enabling us to partner with banks and financial institutions in a way that is wholly complementary to their current offering. We are proud to welcome Wio as our launch partner and look forward to growing together.”
AI drives leap in wealth tech
Arta also launched the first-of-its-kind AI Copilot, purpose-built for wealth management and finance. This patent-pending technology empowers Arta’s members to make smarter investment decisions – ideate, analyse, and monitor their portfolios with the tools and insights that usually require large teams of relationship managers, private bankers, and investment analysts.
Unlike commonly available AI chatbots or apps, Arta’s AI systems are purpose-built for applications in wealth and finance and exploit the reasoning capabilities of the latest large language models. Arta’s AI stack employs several models that work in conjunction with each other – including commercially available closed source models, fine-tuned open source LLMs and several custom built AI/ML models created by Arta’s researchers. These models have access to high-quality public and proprietary data including large financial and risk data sets for training and inference. This enables Arta to combine the fluency of LLMs with the time sensitivity, hard mathematical rigour and explainability necessary for investment and financial applications. Its AI stack, like the rest of Arta’s infrastructure, is highly privacy-preserving and uses encryption at rest and in transit for all user data.
Singapore Minister of State for Trade and Industry and MAS board member, Alvin Tan was on hand to help launch Arta in the City State, alongside investors, fund managers, partners, and clients. The company has established key functions in Singapore including engineering, marketing, product, design and operations and a number of its global leads including its CEO are based in Singapore.
Arta welcomes Ralph Hamers as external advisor
Arta also today welcomes Ralph Hamers as an external senior advisor, providing strategic guidance as the company grows internationally. Ralph Hamers is an advisor to established and new players in the global financial sector. He developed a special knowledge in digitalisation of processes and client offerings. Hamers previously was CEO with UBS and ING
Commenting on his role as senior advisor to Arta, Mr Hamers said:
“A central focus of my leadership has been to take legacy businesses and digitalise, integrating front-to-back technology to drive efficiencies and make the lives of clients and colleagues easier. This often needs major and multi-year transformations in well-established organisations. With Arta, I see the enormous opportunity of having incredibly smart people from the worlds of technology and finance coming together to build a platform that is more than ready to take its place amongst the world’s leading wealth managers.”
Mr. Hamers becomes part of a distinguished group of early investors in Arta, which includes more than 140 technology and finance leaders, such as ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach.
The Arta wealth platform is now available globally to all accredited investors on desktop and mobile. Early members will get their first investment up to $100K managed free for life by Arta (terms and conditions apply). To learn more about Arta, please visit artafinance.com.
Important DisclosuresArta Wealth Management Pte. Ltd. (“Arta Finance”) is licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (“MAS”) whose products and services are only available to Accredited Investors.
Investing in securities involves risk, and there is always the potential of losing money. Certain investments are not suitable for all investors. The content provided herein is for informational purposes only and is not investment or financial advice, tax or legal advice, an offer, solicitation of an offer, or advice to buy or sell or hold securities or investment products. This material has not been reviewed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore. For additional disclosures related to Arta Finance, please visit https://artafinance.com/sg/disclosures.
About Arta Finance:Founded by ex-Google executives, Arta Finance is a digital wealth platform for the savvy that enables more people to access the “financial superpowers” of the ultra-wealthy. The platform provides access to private market investments from elite fund managers, intelligent public market strategies and structured products, and sophisticated financial services such as insurance and estate planning. Headquartered in the US and Singapore, Arta serves its members directly as well as empowering partner financial institutions to expand wealth management to new clients. Arta is backed by Peak XV, Ribbit Capital, Coatue, EDBI, and over 140 luminaries in tech and finance.
Learn more at artafinance.com
Logo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2216796/Arta_Finance_Logo.jpg

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/arta-finance-partners-with-abu-dhabis-wio-invest-to-launch-wealth-as-a-service-for-banks-globally-unveils-arta-ai-copilot-302272603.html

New Supermicro Systems Enable Customers to Upgrade and Consolidate Data Centers for AI Workloads
SAN JOSE, Calif., Oct. 10, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Supermicro, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMCI), a Total IT Solution Provider for AI, Cloud, Storage, and 5G/Edge, announces the launch of a new series of servers, GPU-accelerated systems, and storage servers featuring the AMD EPYC™ 9005 Series processors and AMD Instinct™ MI325X GPUs. The new H14 product line represents one of the most extensive server families in the industry, including Supermicro’s Hyper systems, the Twin multi-node servers, and AI inferencing GPU systems, all available with air or liquid cooling options.  The new “Zen5” processor core architecture implements full data path AVX-512 vector instructions for CPU-based AI inference and provides 17% better instructions per cycle (IPC) than the previous 4th generation EPYC processor, enabling more performance per core.

Supermicro’s new H14 family uses the latest 5th Gen AMD EPYC processors which enable up to 192 cores per CPU with up to 500W TDP (thermal design power).  Supermicro has designed new H14 systems including the Hyper and FlexTwin™ systems which can accommodate the higher thermal requirements. The H14 family also includes three systems for AI training and inference workloads supporting up to 10 GPUs which feature the AMD EPYC 9005 Series CPU as the host processor and two which support the AMD Instinct MI325X GPU.
“Supermicro’s H14 servers have 2.44X faster SPECrate®2017_fp_base performance1 using the EPYC 9005 64 core CPU as compared with Supermicro’s H11 systems using the second generation EPYC 7002 Series CPUs,” said Charles Liang, president and CEO, Supermicro. “This significant performance improvement allows customers to make their data centers more power efficient by reducing the total data center footprint by at least two-thirds2 while also adding new AI processing capabilities. The H14 server family provides the highest performance, density, and power efficiency available through Supermicro’s liquid and air-cooling options, wide selection of system designs, and proven Building Block Solutions.”
For more information about the Supermicro H14 family of products, please visit: www.supermicro.com/aplus 
“Supermicro’s ‘Building Block Solutions’ has enabled it to consistently deliver time-to-market solutions powered by AMD across a variety of compelling system designs,” said Forrest Norrod, executive vice president and general manager, Data Center Solutions Group, AMD. “Our collaboration with Supermicro, along with their in-house engineering design and manufacturing capabilities worldwide combined with their rack-scale integration capability for both air and liquid-cooled systems enables customers of any scale to generate time-to-value from AMD EPYC CPUs and Instinct GPUs.”
Supermicro’s H14 server lineup consists of the following product families:
Hyper – Supermicro’s flagship enterprise server supports maximum performance from two EPYC 9005 CPUs with up to the maximum 192 cores per CPU at 500W and up to 9TB memory in 24 DIMM slots.  With either a 1U chassis with up to 12 2.5″ NVMe/SATA bays or a 2U chassis with up to 24 2.5″ NVMe/SATA bays, the Hyper’s advanced cooling design accommodates the highest performance CPUs for use in demanding AI inference, enterprise or cloud workloads.
CloudDC – This versatile system is optimized for use in Cloud Data Centers and features a single EPYC 9005 CPU with up to 12 2.5″ NVMe/SATA drive bays in a 1U chassis. It’s designed using the OCP (Open Compute Platform) DC-MHS specification (Data Center Modular Hardware System) which ensures compatibility with OCP standards.
GrandTwin™ – The GrandTwin is a 4-node compute platform using single EPYC 9005 CPU in a very dense 2U form-factor. This system is often used in multi-server cluster applications such as object storage, virtualization, and HPC applications.
FlexTwin™ – The FlexTwin is a 2U 4-node high-performance high-density compute system with dual EPYC 9005 CPUs per node. The advanced liquid-cooling provides high power efficiency and allows the operation of the highest performance EPYC 9005 CPUs for use in HPC, EDA and other demanding workloads.
5U GPU System – Supermicro’s EPYC CPU-based 5U PCIe GPU system supports up to 10 double-width accelerators for design and visualization applications.
4U GPU System (Liquid Cooled) – This highly dense EPYC CPU-based 8-way accelerators platform supports OAM accelerators in the most compact 4U form-factor using advanced liquid-cooling.  It is designed for high-performance AI and HPC applications.
8U GPU System – This 8-way accelerator system uses the AMD Instinct MI325X GPU along with the EPYC 9005 CPU for large-scale LLM AI training. The 8U chassis allows deployment in any air-cooled data center.
Supermicro H14 products with AMD EPYC CPUs are available for customer testing today through Supermicro’s JumpStart program.
Supermicro will present the new H14 solutions at the AMD Advancing AI Day on October 10, 2024, at the San Francisco Moscone Center.
1SPECrate®2017_fp_base of 485 using the Supermicro A+ Server 2023US-TR4 and two AMD EPYC 7702 64 core CPUs (https://www.spec.org/cpu2017/results/res2020q1/cpu2017-20200204-20866.html retrieved October 2, 2024) compared with SPECrate®2017_fp_base of 1670 using the Supermicro AS-2126HS-TN and two AMD EPYC 9555 64 core CPUs.  Results of the AS-2126HS-TN with the 9555 CPU to be published on www.spec.org/cpu2017/results on October 10, 2024.
2Based on the SPECrate®2017_fp_base comparison in footnote (1), reduction in number of systems using the AS-2126HS-TN with the 9555 CPU vs. 2023US-TR4 with the 7702 CPU is 70.9%.
About Super Micro Computer, Inc. Supermicro (NASDAQ: SMCI) is a global leader in Application-Optimized Total IT Solutions. Founded and operating in San Jose, California, Supermicro is committed to delivering first-to-market innovation for Enterprise, Cloud, AI, and 5G Telco/Edge IT Infrastructure. We are a Total IT Solutions provider with server, AI, storage, IoT, switch systems, software, and support services. Supermicro’s motherboard, power, and chassis design expertise further enables our development and production, enabling next-generation innovation from cloud to edge for our global customers. Our products are designed and manufactured in-house (in the US, Taiwan, and the Netherlands), leveraging global operations for scale and efficiency and optimized to improve TCO and reduce environmental impact (Green Computing). The award-winning portfolio of Server Building Block Solutions® allows customers to optimize for their exact workload and application by selecting from a broad family of systems built from our flexible and reusable building blocks that support a comprehensive set of form factors, processors, memory, GPUs, storage, networking, power, and cooling solutions (air-conditioned, free air cooling or liquid cooling).
Supermicro, Server Building Block Solutions, and We Keep IT Green are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Super Micro Computer, Inc.
All other brands, names, and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, AMD Instinct, EPYC, and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Photo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2527926/Supermicro_H14_Family.jpgPhoto – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2527923/Supermicro_AS_8126GS.jpgPhoto – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2527924/Supermicro_AS_1116CS.jpgPhoto – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2527925/Supermicro_AS_2116GT.jpgPhoto – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2527927/Supermicro_AS_2126HS.jpgPhoto – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2527928/Supermicro_AS_5126GS.jpgPhoto – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2527929/Supermicro_AS_4125GS.jpgPhoto – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2527930/Supermicro_AS_2126FT.jpgLogo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1443241/Supermicro_Logo.jpg

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/supermicro-introduces-new-servers-and-gpu-accelerated-systems-with-amd-epyc-9005-series-cpus-and-amd-instinct-mi325x-gpus-for-ai-ready-data-centers-302273266.html