Naspers Ceo Is On The Hunt For Deals - With 20-billion To Spend

Bloisi runs both Amsterdam-based Prosus and Naspers, its South African parent, and the companies already hold significant stakes in European companies including Germany's Delivery Hero. Still, most of its deals in recent months have been in historically higher-growth markets, such as a listing in India and a 1.7-billion deal for a travel agency in Brazil.

"We need to invest substantially more here to put Europe in this race and not to keep looking for an outsider," Bloisi said in an interview at the World Economic Forum on Thursday. "Our ecosystem in Europe is ready to grow, and we are ready to invest."

Bloisi was promoted to the CEO role last year and has been charged with finding new sources of growth after an early investment in Chinese videogame behemoth Tencent Holdings ended up dominating the company's books and skewing its market value. He said Prosus is ready to invest closer to home and called President Donald Trump's moves to make the US a superpower in artificial intelligence a "wake-up call" for Europe.

"In Davos last year, the big thing was, 'How we can avoid moving too fast on AI?'," he said. "The Trump administration has moved the narrative to, 'We are going to move faster than anyone else."'

Trump this week rescinded President Joe Biden's AI safety measures and announced a 500-billion AI infrastructure joint venture led by SoftBank Group, OpenAI and Oracle.