Guy Willner
IX AFRICA EXECUTIVE BIO
Guy Willner
TITLE : CO-FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN
Starting his career within the technology industry with Philips NV in Paris and Vienna working in CDROM , Smart Card and Minitel technologies
In 1998 he co-founded IXEurope , raising approximately $ 100 million in venture capital as the CEO and the company ’ s revenue grew over 600 % in its first 3 years . It was listed as Europe ’ s fastest growing company in 2002 Sunday Times Tech Track 100 and Guy received personal recognition as a semi-finalist in the UK ’ s Entrepreneur of the Year 2003 . In 2007 IXEurope was acquired by Equinix Inc for $ 555 million .
After IXEurope Guy continued to support the datacentre industry with a focus on emerging markets . In Johannesburg Guy invested alongside the IFC ( World Bank ) in Teraco , overseeing its progress to become the main hub in South Africa with the largest peering point on the African continent , NAPAfrica . The company was sold to Permira in 2014 for $ 134m and again in 2019 for $ 1bn .
In 2012 Guy ventured into Russia setting up IXcellerate , foreseeing the growth of the Russian data centre market in what is Europe ’ s largest Internet market ( 80 million users ) with investment from the IFC , Sumitomo Corporation and Goldman Sachs , IXcellerate has attracted some of the biggest global names in the Internet , E-commerce , Gaming and Financial markets . In 2017 Guy spearheaded the launch of Eurasia Peering , the newest Peering point in Moscow , and monitors the increase of traffic regularly .
“ What I call the Big Edge is all the cities around the world with more than a million people but without the digital infrastructure to match ”
GUY WILLNER CO-FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN , IXAFRICA
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