Affectiva acquired for $75m; SenseTime brings school-tech to Abu Dhabi
Good morning,
Here’s your weekly roundup of Middle East AI News!
Lots of news to share this week! Perhaps the biggest news is that emotion recognition developer Affectiva has been bought for $73.5 million. Co-founded by Egyptian-American computer scientist and entrepreneur Rana el Kaliouby in 2009 the company has been acquired by Swedish driver monitoring systems company Smart Eye.
Meanwhile, Dubai Data Foundation published its New Data Economy report this week highlighting the fact that low access to data is the a primary constraint holding the data economy back. It seems that we've got better and better at collecting and storing data - we're just not very good at sharing it.
Scroll down for news on IoT airline food service trays, Amazon's planned UAE data centres, SenseTime's deal with Abu Dhabi’s education regulator and robotic advertising signage that can display NFT ART and live Cryptocurrency pricing. Also check out The National's interview with Injazat's new CEO Ussama Dahabiyeh and Schneider Electric's podcast on smart cities with NXN CEO Ghazi Atallah.
Stay safe and have a great weekend!
/Carrington
Startups
Emotion-detection software startup Affectiva acquired for $73.5m — techcrunch.com
#Egypt #Sweden #USA #M&A - Smart Eye, the publicly traded Swedish company that supplies driver monitoring systems for a dozen automakers, has acquired emotion-detection software startup Affectiva for $73.5 million in a cash-and-stock deal. Affectiva, which spun out of the MIT Media Lab in 2009, has developed software that can detect and understand human emotion. (TechCrunch)
Abu Dhabi start-up teams up with Etihad to develop inflight smart tray to reduce food waste — www.thenationalnews.com
#UAE #aviation - Abu Dhabi-based product design startup The Concept is partnering with Etihad Airways to develop an in-flight smart tray that uses IoT to monitor how much food is consumed by passengers to reduce food wastage. (The National)
Humanoid robot for children of determination wins UAE's Smart Toys Competition — www.khaleejtimes.com
#UAE #robotics - Luxembourg-based education and healthcare robotics startup LuxAI S.A. has won the #UAE's Smart Toys Competition, organised by Dubai Future Foundation (DFF). The startup developed an expressive humanoid social srobot for children with specialneeds and autism. (Khaleej Times)
Data Economy
Data economy to become leading economic sector globally, Dubai Future Foundation finds — www.thenationalnews.com
#UAE #dataeconomy - Exceptionally low access to data remains a primary constraint in the data economy ecosystem, in particular for the private sector, concludes an interesting new report published this week by Dubai Future Foundation (DFF) and Dubai Economy. (The National)
UAE to get 3 AWS data centres in 2022 — www.reuters.com
#UAE #datacentres - Amazon.com Inc said on Wednesday its cloud service unit will launch three data centres in the first half of 2022 in the United Arab Emirates, its second Middle East infrastructure region. Amazon Web Services (AWS) opened data centres in Bahrain in 2019. (Reuters)
Education
Abu Dhabi charter schools to be made safer with SenseTime's smart technology — gulfnews.com
#UAE #education - Abu Dhabi’s education regulator, the Abu Dhabi Department of Education and Knowledge (Adek) announced plans to implement AI and smart school technology systems in partnership with Hong Kong-based AI firm SenseTime. (Gulf News)
Egypt launches ‘Speak Arabic’ application for non-Arabic speakers — dailynewsegypt.com
#Egypt #Arabic - Egypt’s Ministry of Emigration and Egyptian Expatriates Affairs launched the “Speak Arabic” online application, on Monday, in cooperation with the Nahdet Misr Publishing House. The app uses AI to personalise the learning experience for each student. (Daily News Egypt)
Media
RoboAds unveils mobile advertising robot for displaying NFT ART and live cryptocurrency pricing — www.prnewswire.com
#UAE #USA #advertising - Dubai-headquartered telepresence robot developer RoboAds has developed the first commercial robot specifically designed for indoor advertising and virtual telepresence. 'RoboSignage' combine digital signage, robotics and AI in one platform. (PR Newswire)
QF''s AI project helps detect ''disinformation'' — menafn.com
#Qatar #media - At present the World Health Organization’s main concern is fighting the pandemic, but then its secondary concern is fighting disinformation. Preslav Nakov, a computer scientist at the Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) a member of Qatar Foundation leads project ‘Tanbih', which uses machine learning to assess the reliability of media sources. (The Peninsula)
Events
Egypt hosts World AI Show 2021 — mcit.gov.eg
#Egypt #WorldAIShow - Egypt is hosting the 25th global edition of the World Artificial Intelligence (AI) Show, organized by Trescon Global, on May 31, online, in collaboration with the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA), and under the patronage of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. (MCIT)
Africa IoT, AI Challenge launched in Egypt — dailynewsegypt.com
#Egypt #IoT - The Africa Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Challenge has been officially launched in Egypt during the closing ceremony of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things (Daily News Egypt)
Interview
Abu Dhabi's Injazat aims to become $1bn company within five years — www.thenationalnews.com
#UAE #Injazat - The National interviews the new Injazat CEO Ussama Dahabiyeh on the company's strategy and plans to grow revenue to $1 billion within the next five years. (The National)
Podcast
NXN CEO talks to Schneider Electric's MEA Goes Green Podcast — nxn.ae
#UAE #SmartCities - NXN CEO Ghazi Atallah talks to Schneider Electric MEA Goes Green Podcast about smart cities and how the GCC is showing the way. (NXN)
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About Carrington Malin — www.carringtonmalin.com Carrington Malin helps large organisations, digital brands and fast growing tech ventures with brand, communications and go-to-market strategies.