JSE-listed Novus Holdings, which is best known as an industrial printing and packaging operation, is pivoting into artificial intelligence.
The company, which prints some of South Africa’s most prominent newspapers, has bought a stake in AI company Bytefuse for R55-million to “enhance its capabilities to deliver enterprise-scale AI solutions”.
Novus, which was known as Paarl Media Group until 2015, said it had observed Bytefuse’s success in enhancing publisher Maskew Miller Learning’s (MML’s) educational services through advanced AI solutions.
“This investment from Novus Holdings will enable us to scale our solutions and bring AI-driven innovation to more sectors,” said Bytefuse CEO Greg Newman in a statement on Friday. The size of the stake was not disclosed.
Bytefuse helped MML build a custom tutoring application called Maski, which is underpinned by AI and will support students unable to access private education.
“Research has shown that one-on-one tutoring, which MML’s AI tutor will seek to emulate, can potentially improve student outcomes by an average of two grades. This underscores the importance of Bytefuse’s work with MML, where AI is not just a tool but a transformative force enhancing educational experiences and outcomes,” Novus said.
Bytefuse’s technology is based on the experience of a team of AI specialists led by Prof Etienne Barnard, who has a PhD in AI from Carnegie Mellon University “where some of the leading thinkers in AI were lecturing and working at the time”.
Building blocks
“Etienne’s 35 years of experience means he understands the building blocks of AI. When issues arise, he can address them at a fundamental level. The team we started assembling in 2020 has been vetted and established by Etienne. The fruits are now starting to be harvested,” said Novus Holdings CEO Andre van der Veen in a statement.
“The company’s long-term vision and preparedness, starting its journey four years ago, well before the recent AI hype cycle, has given it a head start in developing robust AI solutions.”
Bytefuse utilises open-source AI models, which Newman said are “typically smaller and more cost effective to host” than the large language models used to create services like ChatGPT.
“We’re finding that by training them on a company’s proprietary data and leveraging the right context, we’re able to improve the quality of results to the point where they outperform general off-the-shelf implementations. By using smaller models, we’re able to offer cost-effective hosting within the client organisations ensuring data privacy and security,” Newman said.
“Our knowledge and experience of building and deploying these models at scale is what allows us to offer enterprises viable solutions while protecting their data.”
Bytefuse was incubated by Alphawave. – © 2024 NewsCentral Media
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