Gambling boss Teddy Sagi is planning to invest $3 million into a smart energy start-up, it has emerged. Sagi, an Israeli-born businessman, is the founder of gambling software developer Playtech and has also recently invested in a number of other technology and real estate businesses over the past several years.
The billionaire investor will now fuel $3 million into Israel-based start-up SmartGreen. Founded in 2014 and based in the city of Rehovot, the company develops and distributes a system that both monitors and optimizes energy consumption. SmartGreen has been marketing software as being suitable for deployment across factories, commercial properties, and hospitals, among a number of facilities that require higher energy consumption.
Reportedly, high-profile clients including HP Inc., McDonald’s Israeli branch, and Israeli supermarket chain Shufersal Ltd. have opted for SmartGreen’s products. London’s Camden Market, which Mr. Sagi purchased back in 2014, has also been revealed as one of the clients of SmartGreen.
According to the smart energy start-up’s official website, its software reviews and detects an organization’s sources of energy waste, and then optimizes the performance of these energy consumers to eventually reduce consumption by up to 25%.
Mr. Sagi’s $3 million investment comes after the smart energy consumption firm previously raised nearly $2 million to fund its activities.
Mr. Sagi’s Recent Non-Gambling Endeavors
The Israeli tech billionaire, whose net worth currently stands at $2.7 billion (Forbes: December 2017) has steered his investment interests away from the global gambling industry. As mentioned above, he entered into real estate with the 2014 acquisition of Camden Market. The businessman bought the popular marketplace for £400 million. He has revealed that he plans to invest over £300 million in Camden Market and to develop the area into a popular real estate and technology hub with office space to accommodate different business activities.
Mr. Sagi’s real estate interests expanded into Germany earlier this year. Back in May, the businessman bought a controlling stake in German real estate developer and owner Brack Capital Properties. He paid around $280 million for a 44% stake in the property firm.
The purchase of Camden Market was among the first signals that Mr. Sagi would look to diversify his business interests in areas different from gambling. Here it is also important to note that the businessman has gradually and significantly reduced his stake in Playtech over the past year.
Late last year, he announced that he would reduce his stake in the company he had found to just 21.6%. He offloaded further 4% of Playtech’s float in March. In June, he sold 11.5% of the gambling software developer to raise around £340 million to fund real estate acquisitions. That latest sale left him with a 6.1% stake in Playtech. He was the largest shareholder in the gambling company back in October 2016 with a 33.6% stake.
