Investing in AI, What Does the Next World Look Like?

good afternoon your highnesses excellencies ladies and gentlemen my name is Emma Graham please um and I cover the Middle East for CNBC I'm so happy day three of Abu Dhabi Finance week I'm so happy to be joined here today with his Royal Highness Prince khed bin Al bin talal thank you so much for joining me today as you all know he's the founder and CEO of KBW Ventures and he's one of the Region's best known Venture capitalists Prince KH great to be sitting with you here on stage and thank you to our hosts ad GM alhamd I'd love to thank ad ADW for having me here adgm specifically obviously for having me here it's absolute pleasure to be amongst all the leaders and uh I really look forward to this communication and I love this new setup people don't get to see my socks so it's wonderful it's nice to be behind a desk it's like being on set at cnvc I'm very happy and thank you all again for joining so let's get right into it the generative AI Market expected to grow by 1.3 trillion over the next 10 years and AI investment could Peak to as high as 4% of GDP in the US around 2032 so when you think about investing in AI how do you look at sectors and how do you decide what will really give you the best returns when you're looking at investing in a company so if we look at AI we don't look at the companies that you use AI as a gimmick but they have to use it on a fundamental level and it has to be on a foundational level and a transformative level that um um that affects certain certain markets that we're interested in specifically and I'll give you a few examples um um Healthcare uh and education um AI right now is as good as the average doctor the average teacher so imagine if you can scale that to underst stri communities around the world for um for children um an education um from an education standpoint uh every child can have um a tailored made um educational um platform tailor made for them and their specific needs we all we all know that the education system isn't necessarily the most uh successful way to teach people because it uses a simple a blanket approach for everyone and everyone has their different needs so AI really can solve that problem and you'd have significant um um changes in in in the future by developing these um uh specific AI tailored made um um educational platform for for kids now let alone um um underserved communities but also for the for the for the community as a whole look at uh Healthcare it's as good as the average doctor so you can you can you can now democratize the information that any doctor can have around the world and you can um um um take it out to uh unders communities so the power of AI really is absolutely enormous and this is the this is why we're really excited about the future uh of companies that are using AI from a foundational level and not just really a gimmick it's really about doing good and when you look at investing in AI it's really what can make the most difference and what when you look at a startup does it need to have for you to really say yes this is a play that I want to make so you have to have some sort of a Clear Vision uh so um a vision without execution is just a hallucination so you have to have some sort of some sort of vision that this AI can solve a real world problem in whatever sector that you're interested in and there are plenty of them um scalability so you'd have to have these um these AI models and these companies uh solve um scalability issues when it comes to Regional or local Regional and then a global scale uh and that's really part of what the philosophy of KBW Ventures is is really look at looking at companies here in the region and internationally seeing what kind of synergies they we or they can bring uh to each other and then uh extend that um um that philosophy to other regions so for example if we're looking at companies like um queso is one of our companies a Saudi based company that's a SAS company that focuses on food supply um uh management uh for restaurants and the suppliers so they predict uh customer interact customer interactions within a week and they will predict what would um this company any need to to supply on uh to supply up on uh for the weeks ahead or the or the months ahead anyway so that that's that's just one example but um what we would be looking at is having that company scale regionally and then how and then hopefully work uh to scale that internationally and bring that technology into the US getting us companies to come here and having some sort of presence in the in in um in the United Arab Emirates Saudi Arabia or whatever so scalability that's scalability for sure you just invested in two new AI uh Investments minurva and Hercules AI tell me about those companies and kind of what made you look at them sure so um manura is um is a platform that uh that uses AI to predict um um um consumer behavior and land prices for for real estate companies uh and it's it's shown very significant progress in the early days and we were very excited about it so we had to double down on it really and really invest in it and then bring them obviously here one of their main um um main customers that we're trying we're working with is neon for example obviously Riyad and Dubai and and and ababi would would naturally be um a perfect fit Hercules AI is a fascinating platform that uses AI generative AI for healthcare uh financial institutions and what want to aggregate customer information and give people information that they need in give these companies information that they need in a glance many of your portfolio companies are AI backed and using generative AI tell me a little bit about how those companies are looking at integrating AI into their workflow so there are a few companies that we have a few of them um we're focused mainly on SAS for example so SAS has a plays a big role uh and and what we look at uh we look at obviously consumer behavior and predicting um uh predicting what consumer Behavior would look like uh for certain companies we have other ones in the healthcare industry but mainly uh of our main focuses actually is on cyber security uh so we have a company in the cyber security field uh that uses AI to predict um to to see early indications of any cyber threat um neutralize it and do some some sort of remedication for um for these um threats without really having a an expert at at at the um at the computer to actually um solve these issues so it really again it gives other people uh not just the experts but other people who are not necessarily that big of experts in cyber security the ability to have this interaction and to have this um um uh this job security so we're we're talking about not only uh it being vastly efficient for companies but also hiring people that aren necessarily um qualified to to be hired in the traditional sense but AI can help them facilitate that are you worried about the impact of AI because I'm not I think you know it becomes an opportunity it's like the invention of pen ayin perhaps the opportunities are endless and it can save us a lot of time is there anything you're worried about when you look at this technology honestly um General worries are there but but in in um in in a really in in a sense of of what AI has shown and what history has proven from Innovation and what innovation has done for uh Humanity when it comes to um uh the Industrial Revolution to the dot uh Revolution to the internet Revolution sorry and then to the AIA Revolution it it we've only seen increases in gdps we only increased in increases in in in um and and spending we've also seen increased in in people in people's um um yearly wages so I don't see necessarily a threat there but I see an opportunity um and I do see an opportunity for uh specific companies to really open the open the rein a little bit and and have open source AI really be a a um a Forefront rather than it been it being controlled by um three or four strong players like L of x x. Google anthropic and open AI obviously and we were talking about this a bit backstage how are you using just in your day-to-day and also in in your work how are you using AI on a daily basis so on the fly if there's any information that I needed to know um uh instantly I would I would have a look at it just like today that we had a quick discussion on it uh but more importantly for me I use it for not taking um I really do I have um so we have a lot of meanings obviously that that lasts maybe 30 minutes or 45 minutes I know have an an AI uh fireflies if you heard of it but uh summarize the meeting give me all the key points that I needed to be even if I couldn't attend them as as if I was there so I can get a a a a a reges digest approach on these certain um meanings that I have and I know exact roughly what these how these meetings went that's really useful it takes away the need for like multiple multiple assistance you can just rely on the technology it really does yeah it's probably more accurate as well it's more accurate and there's more efficiency there uh there's no there's no um um um um um fatigue that happens so it's it's it's always there at a at a glance so there's a lot of efficiency and a lot of positives that I see from that I see happening from it as opposed to the negatives that we keep seeing around the world I love it bullish as we say um so you were an early investor in food Tech we did one of our first interviews together several years ago and we were all only talking about food Tech it was pre AI boom yes um and this was way before food Tech was really trendy sure but you knew you kind of back then you knew and I know obviously you you put this into your lifestyle as well how did you know that foodtech was going to be such an important area for you to invest in so foodtech um food security has been on the Forefront uh at least for our from in our company uh for at least 8 to nine years um and the reason is isn't because of any um any um crystal ball or any any um um um expertise that we had on predicting the future but the world is growing and the resources aren't necessarily there to feed uh as many people they are there but that's another argument that I I'm not going to get into right now we need more time we we already know that um um but we used uh the the um just common sense and logic that um innovation technology and um and U and food uh food Tech really were focused on um efficiency and producing um High valued nutritionally valued um lowcost getting there um um food sources that aren't um um accessible for uh for for the masses so what do I mean by that factory farming factory farming is vastly inefficient um food Tech really solves that issue by cutting 90% of maybe 99% of the land the land uh cost about 90% of the the food cost of the water cost the energy cost to there to really produce the same um um the same piece of protein that you'd get from an animal now I don't say that that's going that has to replace the way we eat that's never going to replace the way we eat and we're definitely going to be an animal-based um um um um Society but I think for for scalability and for underserved communities and underserved continents or or countries this is a perfect example of how you can really get nutrition to to the vast majority of people quickly and cheaply so much opportunity there before I let you go I promised that I would ask you this and you were very kind and you said you'd let me sure what do you think President elect Donald Trump's new AI the appointment of David saaks is this AI cryp are and this is a new position so we have no idea what it might mean but what do you think it could mean for big Tech so I think it's very proi big Tech so uh the quick um uh research that I had because I know him I know of him generally but the quick um research that I did of him he comes from a really prominent business background he has an amazing um network of of investors and partners that he's investors in payal Mafia and whatnot which I love that name by the way Mafia yeah they've gone on to do very well exactly yeah so he's got a really good Network he's is really prominent when it comes to free speech and decentralization um more importantly well not more importantly equalism importantly he's his Pro crypto uh crypto um um um democratizes the ability for people to invest into these um other Securities other than stocks and bonds and the traditional um um um um uh methods so for my standpoint I think it's a great hire I think it's it's I think he's he's he's definitely he's definitely Pro crypto he's definitely Pro AI he's definitely Pro Innovation and I think uh they will he would definitely lead um the United States in the change that's going to happen the next four years I love it before I let you go what's your favorite platform that you're using for AI at the moment I honestly like xai x. aai I use it a lot I use anthropic a little more also love it Prince KH thank you so much great Absolut pleasure thank you thank you thank you