Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the most exciting and transformative opportunities of our time. From my vantage point as a venture investor at Playfair Capital, where I focus on investing and building community around AI, this is a great time for investors to help build companies in this space. There are three key reasons. First, with 40 percent of the world's population now online, and more than 2 billion smartphones being used with increasing addiction every day (KPCB), we're creating data assets, the raw material for AI, that describe our behaviors, interests, knowledge, connections and activities at a level of granularity that has never existed.

Artificial intelligence is one of the most exciting and transformative opportunities of our time, argues Nathan Benaich, an investor at London-based investment firm Playfair Capital. While the field has gone through two cycles of bull ('50s-'70s and '80s) and bear ('70s and '97-'93) markets, where expectations were hyped up only to eventually fall short of their promises, I think this time is different. From my vantage point as a venture investor at Playfair Capital, where I focus on investing and building a community around AI, I think it's a fantastic time to build and invest into companies creating or leveraging AI for their products and services. There are three key reasons. First, our addictive usage of the internet, software products and smartphones – all two billion of them – has created data assets that describe our behaviours, interests, knowledge, connections (and more) at a scale and granularity that has never existed before.

Federico Pirzio-Biroli, the founder of London VC fund Playfair Capital, is planning to move to Africa to become an angel investor there, and the fund is closing its coworking space at Warner Yard in Clerkenwell. Playfair Capital specialises in artificial intelligence and machine learning, and has invested in well-known startups such as restaurant app Dojo, DueDil, Vinaya, Stripe, Streethub, Hassle, and Stratajet. Pirzio-Biroli told Business Insider that he worked at NGOs in Africa before becoming a technology investor, so this is a logical move for him. He says that angel investing in Africa can make a big difference to economies there, whereas London is now flooded with early stage funding for technology startups. The Playfair Capital fund isn't going to close its doors completely - instead Pirzio-Biroli is handing over control to his remaining staff and preparing to become a limited, rather than general, partner. My decision to move to East Africa was made in November.