A London-based artificial intelligence (AI) company is creating more than 100 jobs at its new office in Belfast. Napier AI provides technology to help banks and other financial institutions detect and prevent criminal behaviour, such as money laundering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The firm, which was founded in 2015 and employs 250 people, moved into its new office at Pearl Assurance in the city centre last week. Twenty-five of the 106 new jobs are already in place, with the remaining roles expected to be filled by 2027.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new roles come with average salaries of more than \u00a346,000. Once the jobs are filled, Napier AI said it will contribute almost \u00a35m in additional salaries to the Northern Ireland economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Greg Watson, chief executive of Napier AI, said the company\u2019s mission is to tackle what he describes as a \u201cblight in society\u201d \u2013 money laundering. \u201cMoney laundering is incredibly successful unfortunately,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c3.2 trillion dollars a year is laundered, so we\u2019re trying to bring automation AI to try and solve that and we feel like we\u2019re making a big difference.\u201d Mr Watson said the firm\u2019s decision to expand into Northern Ireland followed a \u201creally extensive search globally\u201d on locations, including Warsaw, Porto and Lisbon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe felt there was talent pools we could tap and we looked at about 12 different countries,\u201d he said. \u201cWe looked at the talent and some of the benefits here, the location, the language, the whole thing and we\u2019re super excited about growing a presence here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr Watson said the roles include high-end research and development positions.
\u201cA lot of AI skills, a lot of development skills. We believe the talent coming out of the universities and the talent in the general area is super impressive and we feel like we\u2019re going to have a big future here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Economy Minister Caoimhe Archibald said the announcement of about \u00a310m in investment by the company is a \u201cvote of confidence\u201d for Northern Ireland. \u201cThese are high-tech jobs in what is a priority sector for us as an executive, and they really closely align with what we\u2019re trying to achieve in terms of our economic vision,\u201d she told BBC News NI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an exciting company that has chosen to base itself here in Belfast because of what we have to offer in terms of a location, but also that skill talent pool that is coming through our universities and colleges, so this is a really positive announcement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Invest NI\u2019s chief executive Kieran Donoghue said it was \u201cwonderful news\u201d for Northern Ireland. The creation of \u201cvery high quality jobs\u201d in data science, software engineering and professional services would help raise Northern Ireland\u2019s profile to other tech companies, he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A London-based artificial intelligence (AI) company is creating more than 100 jobs at its new office in Belfast. Napier AI provides technology to help banks and other financial institutions detect and prevent criminal behaviour, such as money laundering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":471619,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[688],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-471612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-infotainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}