Lisbon, July 23, 2024 (Lusa) - NOS, one of Portugal's leading telecommunications service providers, announced on Tueday that it has bought 20% of Portuguese company DareData Engineering, which specialises in artificial intelligence projects, a partnership that will allow "both companies to grow" in this area of "technological innovation and disruption".
The size of the investment made by NOS was not disclosed.
In a statement, the telecommunications group said that "NOS has just acquired a 20% stake in DareData Engineering, one of the leading names on the rise in the field of AI and which is shaping the future of artificial intelligence in Portugal, with AI, machine learning and generative AI solutions."
The partnership, it said, "will allow both companies to grow in this area of innovation and technological disruption, which will be very important in the future and in which DareData has helped companies all over the world to be more efficient and competitive."
Speaking to Lusa last March, DareData partner and co-founder Nuno Brás said that its turnover had risen 82% in 2023 to €3.1 million and that it intended to expand its presence in the UK this year.
Created in 2019, DareData has some 40 clients in its portfolio and more than 100 national and international projects completed.
"We are very pleased with our new stake in a company with high growth potential in an area as strategic as generative artificial intelligence," its CEO, Miguel Almeida, is quoted in the statement as saying.
"There was already a path built between NOS and DareData, during which we were able to observe the quality of its management team and the very valuable pool of qualified talent," he added. "We believe that this operation will open up new perspectives for the development of a range of new AI solutions for a global market."
DareData works in several sectors, from telecommunications to industry, pharmaceuticals, retail and banking.
In addition to Portugal, the company has been expanding its global presence, developing artificial intelligence projects and solutions in countries such as the US, Brazil, Spain, France, Greece, Norway and Australia.
"This partnership will allow us to bring AI to even more companies, in Portugal and around the world," the statement quotes another parter, Ivo Bernardo, as saying. "We've always had an excellent relationship with NOS and we've learned a lot from what we've been able to bring to the organisation's data and AI areas.
"On the other hand, we feel that the trust they place in our ability is also a bet on the distinctive way we look at our company's culture and people management," he added. "NOS' entry into our company's capital turns out to be a natural step in a relationship between two organisations, based on the values and vision we have about the impact of technology on organisations, people and society. We know that this path is made up of scalable, secure AI solutions with high added value."
DareData, currently overseen by Brás, Bernardo and Rui Figueiredo, is the result of a partnership between Brás and Samuel Hopkins, both teachers at the Lisbon Data Science Academy, and has more than 50 engineers and data scientists from Portuguese institutions such as Instituto Superior Técnico, Nova Information Management School, among others.
ALU/ARO // ARO.
Lusa
