Prosus goes full gen AI

South African-born global corporation Prosus has launched a generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool called PlusOne, which it says is “the equivalent of an all-in-one AI team member”. It is intended to accelerate the performance of the global Prosus network of portfolio businesses, across fintech, food delivery, classifieds and edtech. The company announced in a statement: “We’ve dedicated over five years to developing our Prosus AI Lab, an industry-leading applied AI centre that systematically shares best practices and accelerates experimentation of emerging technologies, providing a unique asset for the companies we invest in.”

PlusOne is already delivering “a unique and differentiated advantage for our network of over 800 data scientists working across the 80+ companies within our Ecommerce portfolio,” said the company.

PlusOne integrates seamlessly into companies’ working systems through Slack, assisting and automating a wide range of tasks – from compiling reports and translating documents to explaining and modifying code. It leverages the capabilities of more than 10 diverse Generative AI model types that have for the first time been integrated into an all-in-one offering.

During its initial roll-out phase, PlusOne has been adopted by over 25 companies across the Prosus group and has thousands of monthly active users. PlusOne will now be offered to all of Prosus and Naspers’s portfolio companies, including Superbalist, Takealot.com and Media24 in South Africa.  

More than 70% of users have reported an increase in productivity, while in specific software development tasks the time savings can reach 50% or more. PlusOne is designed for high levels of data privacy and features enterprise-level security, maintaining control and ownership of the company’s data submitted to and generated by PlusOne.

Euro Beinat, global head of AI and Data Science at Prosus and Naspers, said: “After the initial roll-out, we have seen organic adoption across hundreds of teams in our portfolio. This tool has become instrumental for teamwork, but also to discover and rapidly test AI use cases. We have seen several companies, such as iFood or Brainly, graduate these use cases into their products and release them to their customers. PlusOne not only improves team efficiency, it also unlocks discovery of business opportunities.”

* For more information, visit https://plusone.io/.