Amazon.com Inc. and global technology investor Prosus NV have entered into a significant **cloud** and **artificial intelligence (AI)** partnership aimed at enhancing Prosus’s competitive position and accelerating its global expansion. The multi-year agreement, announced today, involves Prosus consolidating its existing cloud and AI contracts into a single strategic pact with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing arm of Amazon. This move seeks to optimize Prosus’s contract management processes related to cloud services and AI, leading to substantial cost savings.
Igor Cardoso, Head of Prosus Ecosystem, indicated that the three-year agreement with AWS is valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars, although he did not disclose the precise figure. This collaboration comes as Prosus aims to streamline its operations and bolster its AI capabilities, particularly in Europe, India, and Latin America, under the leadership of Chief Executive Officer Fabricio Bloisi.
As part of this strategy, Cardoso mentioned plans to roll out a large commerce model across Latin America, where Prosus has already established various operations. These include iFood for food delivery and logistics in Brazil, Despegar for travel services, and OLX for online classifieds. Following the implementation of this model in Latin America, Cardoso indicated intentions to expand further into Europe and eventually India.
With the increasing adoption of AI technologies, Cardoso believes that standardizing models across different regions will facilitate the rapid development of new applications, despite restrictions on sharing information between regions. Prosus currently employs a team of approximately 1,000 AI professionals who will collaborate with Amazon’s team to create innovative applications. The company reportedly allocates about $100 million annually to AI talent and infrastructure, emphasizing its commitment to the sector.
In the past 18 to 24 months, Cardoso noted, Prosus has successfully created and launched agents across its various business units. The company is also investing in the development of life assistants intended to support these businesses in their operations.
Originating from Naspers, a global consumer internet group that made early strategic investments in the tech sector, Prosus has a notable history of investment. In 2001, it acquired a 46% stake in Tencent Holdings Ltd. for $32 million, retaining a 23% interest in Tencent’s WeChat, now valued at nearly $156 billion. In an effort to sharpen its focus on global consumer internet operations amid rising competition, Naspers later spun off Prosus.
Since then, under Bloisi’s leadership, reports suggest that the CEO is concentrating on profitability and growth across Prosus’s business units. Recent acquisitions, including the European food-delivery service Just Eat Takeaway.com for approximately $4.6 billion and around $1.7 billion for Argentina’s Despegar, reflect this strategy.
Through the agreement with AWS, Prosus plans to leverage Amazon’s extensive infrastructure and data centers across various locations to maintain its competitive edge in the technology sector. As the tech landscape continues to evolve, this partnership underscores both companies’ commitment to harnessing the power of AI and cloud computing to drive future growth.
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