Israel’s Liquidity Group joins Adio's $545m innovation programme

FinTech-focused company to set up R&D centre at Abu Dhabi Global Market

Abdulla AlShamsi, acting director general of Adio, right, signs the agreement with Ron Daniel, chief executive of Israel's Liquidity Group. Photo: Adio

Israel’s Liquidity Group is joining Abu Dhabi Investment Office’s Dh2 billion ($545 million) innovation programme and will set up a research and development centre in the capital.

Adio has awarded Liquidity Group with competitive financial incentives and will support the company with non-financial incentives throughout the partnership, it said in a statement on Tuesday.

Liquidity Group is the first Israeli company to join Adio's innovation progamme that was launched in 2020 to support innovation-focused companies through incentives and other measures and help them grow their business.

Founded in 2018, Liquidity Group is a technology firm that has become the industry’s fastest-growing lender to mid-market, late-stage companies by automating the entire debt lending cycle.

“Liquidity Group makes a strong addition to Abu Dhabi’s financial services ecosystem, bringing its robust expertise in machine learning to grow the venture financing landscape,” said Abdulla AlShamsi, acting director general of Adio.

The partnership “also serves to deepen the relationship between the UAE and Israel, as the two markets pursue innovation-driven technologies and activities with far-reaching impact”, he said.

The company’s R&D centre at Abu Dhabi Global Market will focus on developing its machine learning-enabled lending technology solutions for its underwriting business.

It will also build a centre of excellence in enterprise machine learning that supports other startups within Abu Dhabi in applying Liquidity Group’s modelling methodology. It will also engage with Abu Dhabi-based universities to develop educational training programmes and certifications focused on machine learning.

"We at ADGM, will continue to support the efforts of ADIO to amplify the role of Abu Dhabi as a growing hub for R&D and knowledge building in line with the emirate’s vision to achieve a diversified economy," said Dhaher Al Mheiri, chief executive of ADGM Registration Authority.

Adio has also established an office in Tel Aviv in 2021 to support innovative Israeli companies looking to establish and expand their operations in the UAE capital.

"The UAE and ADGM, in particular, are the best places in the world to scale tech companies," said Ron Daniel, chief executive of Liquidity Group.

"We look forward to extending our partnership with Adio to benefit all UAE tech."

Abu Dhabi is positioning itself to attract and nurture start-ups and aims to be a hub for technology companies.

Last month, Adio and Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing unit of Amazon, joined forces to launch a new cloud innovation centre in the capital that will help spur innovation in the public and private sectors.

In September, US software company Oracle opened a technology collaboration centre on Reem Island that aims to help organisations boost their bottomlines.

The emirate also set up Hub71 in 2019 to support start-ups and boost the technology ecosystem in the capital.

Start-ups at Hub71, numbering about 200, have raised more than Dh3.2 billion in funding, generated Dh2.5 billion in revenue and created 800 direct jobs since its inception through to the third quarter of 2022, Hub71 deputy chief executive Ahmad Alwan told The National in October.

Hub71's role is part of a broader agenda by the UAE government that promotes entrepreneurship across all sectors. The nation aims to become “the entrepreneurial nation by 2031", according to the Ministry of Economy.

It also aims to be home to 20 unicorns — or start-ups with a valuation of $1bn and above — by then, double than initially planned, Minister of Economy Abdulla bin Touq said during Gitex Global last month.