BrazilDrake Star CEO forecasts tech trends at Innovation event in Dubai
The Co-CEO of M&A investment specialists Drake Star Partners has given a keynote address on the tech trends that will shape the investment and M&A landscape at the Arab Innovation conference in Dubai.
Marc Deschamps, the Managing Partner and Co-CEO of Drake Star Partners – a global investment banking firm with a focus on corporate finance and mergers & acquisitions in the tech, media and communications sectors – has laid out his vision of the future tech economy for an audience at the annual Arab Innovation summit in Dubai; the largest gathering of innovators in the Middle East and North African region.
Developed in collaboration with the global strategy consulting firm Roland Berger, Deschamps’ presentation, ‘7 tech trends that will (re)shape the world (and redefine the entrepreneur’s economy)’ focused on the burgeoning disruptive arenas of FinTech, Blockchain, Future Mobility, Internet of Things (IoT), Robotics, Smart Cities and Artificial Intelligence.
Across the subjects, the presentation noted that $27 billion has been invested in FinTech since 2017, while 72% of sources for FinTech innovation will originate in start-ups. Companies of note currently disrupting the space include Transferwise (offering free money transfers) valued at around $1.6 billion, and the peer-to-peer lending platform LendingClub at a similar valuation.
Other areas of interest were Blockchain, with the market predicted to grow from the $1 billion invested last year to $7.7 billion by 2024, adding a whopping $300-$400 billion in annual economic value globally by 2027; Mobility – as to the autonomous driving and shared mobility markets set to change our way of life; IoT and its imagined $11 trillion economic contribution by just 2025; Robotics – expected to triple in sales to $52 billion over the same period, and; Smart Cities, with an estimated $41 trillion to be spent by cities on smart technologies over the next two decades.
At number one on the list was Artificial Intelligence. Here, the presentation predicts $25-$40 trillion to be added to the economy through AI by 2035, with huge financial impacts in the manufacturing, wholesale & retail, financial services and professional services sectors. The flipside, as the presentation says, is that ‘AI, Blockchain and Robotics don’t feed on bananas,’ with Deschamps predicting that energy consumption will rise 17% by 2030 as a result.
The theme of this year’s conference ‘Innovation in Technology’ centered on developments in six key sectors; Smart Government, Transportation, Health Care, Energy and Utilities, Technology, and Financial Services, with expert innovation industry speakers from a range of organisations including General Electric and NASA.
Commenting on the event, Deschamps said; “From what I gathered over the past few days, most tech and finance leaders agree that tomorrow’s innovations will differ from today’s in terms of their volume and impact. We are seeing a strong acceleration of financial activity in core sectors that will profoundly transform our society. Dubai’s place in the world is a perfect example of this acceleration.”
