Good morning!
Welcome to this week’s Middle East AI News email digest!
No surprise that it’s been another jam-packed week full of AI news, with Ai Everything Abu Dhabi taking place on Tuesday and Wednesday (see all our Ai Everything coverage here). Again, too much for this newsletter, so I’ll keep this short and leave more space for stories.
Scroll down for more news.
Thanks for reading!
/Carrington
Arabic AI
TII launches three Arabic Falcon models
#UAE #Arabic - Technology Innovation Institute (TII) has launched three Arabic models, including Falcon-Emirati, which scored 84.83 percent on the Alyah benchmark and outperformed all tested Arabic and multilingual open-source models. TII also released Falcon-ASR for speech transcription and Falcon-OCR-Arabic for structured document extraction. (Middle East AI News)
Napster and HUMAIN deploy Arabic-native agents
#Saudi #Arabic - Napster has partnered with HUMAIN to deploy Arabic-native AI agents across Saudi government and enterprise organisations. The integration combines HUMAIN’s ALLaM language model, speech recognition and Arabic text-to-speech with Napster’s multimodal platform, using technology shaped by more than 600 Arabic language and cultural experts. (Middle East AI News)
NVIDIA halves Saudi dialect transcription errors
#Saudi #AIvoice - NVIDIA has cut transcription errors for Najdi and Hijazi Arabic from 55 percent to around 30 percent by fine-tuning its Nemotron 3.5 speech recognition model on SDAIA’s SADA dataset. Developed in Saudi Arabia, the dataset contains about 667 hours of transcribed Saudi audio. (Middle East AI News)
Arabic AI Atlas maps 1,000-plus models
#Saudi #Arabic - Riyadh developer Hesham Haroon has launched the Arabic AI Atlas, an open-source resource cataloguing more than 1,000 Arabic AI models and tools. The project also maps more than 1,000 datasets, giving developers a central reference for discovering Arabic-language resources and building new applications. (Middle East AI News)
ROI
90% of Saudi firms say AI meets ROI goals
#Saudi #adoption - Riverbed says 90% of Saudi organisations report AI initiatives have met or exceeded ROI goals, while 66% increased investment over the past year. However, 77% remain hesitant to let AI make operational decisions without human approval, despite strong confidence in governance. (Middle East AI News)
Research
KAUST AI targets mineral exploration uncertainty
#Saudi #mining - KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology) has developed a generative model that produces multiple plausible underground scenarios from limited geological data. Trained on hundreds of thousands of synthetic 3D models, the technology will now be tested on Saudi geology under a 30-month research contract with mining company Ma’aden. (Middle East AI News)
MBZUAI unveils autonomous biomedical research model
#UAE #biomedicine - Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) has unveiled DoAtlas-2, a causal model designed to run biomedical research cycles autonomously. An open-source release is planned. (Middle East AI News)
TokenAI releases 41m-parameter decision model
#Egypt #AImodels - Alexandria-based TokenAI has released Neo, a 41-million-parameter model designed for decisions such as selecting tools or escalating tasks for human review. Trained from scratch on 400,000 synthetic records covering around one million decisions, its weights, training code and dataset have been published. (Middle East AI News)
Sovereign AI
MetisJean launches sovereign operating system
#UAE #sovereignAI - Dubai startup MetisJean has launched Jean, a sovereign AI operating system designed to run within organisations’ own infrastructure. The company says internal benchmarks show token usage can fall by 90 percent. MetisJean is currently seeking $5 million funding. (Middle East AI News)
Data Centres
MIS wins $500 million HUMAIN data centre order
#Saudi #datacentres - Riyadh-based Al Moammar Information Systems has secured a $500 million work order from HUMAIN for 50MW of AI data centre capacity. The order forms part of a wider agreement worth nearly $2.3 billion covering up to 250MW of domestic infrastructure. (Middle East AI News)
MEEZA to host Qai GPU infrastructure in Qatar
#Qatar #datacentres - National AI company Qai will host advanced GPU infrastructure in a MEEZA Tier III data centre, keeping compute services and customer data under Qatari jurisdiction. MEEZA operates five certified facilities with 18MW of combined capacity and will provide power, monitoring and lifecycle management. (Middle East AI News)
Agentic AI
Dubai launches agentic AI accelerator
#UAE #AgenticAI - Dubai Future Foundation has launched an agentic AI accelerator involving 33 government entities. The programme will assess more than 300 public-facing services to identify opportunities for deploying autonomous AI systems across government operations and citizen services in Dubai. (Middle East AI News)
Inception42 launches bilingual boardroom platform
#UAE #assistants - Abu Dhabi-based Inception42 has launched Insight, a decision intelligence platform for boards and executive teams. Available in Arabic and English as SaaS or private cloud, it supports agenda preparation, real-time meeting insights, minutes and action tracking, and is already deployed with government and enterprise clients. (Middle East AI News)
Education
Samsung adds generative AI to UAE training
#UAE #education - The UAE Artificial Intelligence Office and Samsung Gulf have opened registration for Samsung Innovation Campus 2026, adding a generative AI training track. Open to UAE nationals aged 18 to 29, the programme builds on an initiative that has graduated more than 400 students since 2022. (Zawya)
Qatar graduates first AI engineering cohort
#Qatar #education - City University Qatar has graduated the country’s first Bachelor of Engineering in Artificial Intelligence cohort. The institution also celebrated its first Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence graduates. (Gulf Times)
Dubai prepares new school technology rules
#UAE #education - Dubai’s Knowledge and Human Development Authority is preparing standards governing schools’ use of AI and other digital technologies from next year, covering safeguards, parental involvement and age-appropriate use. The UAE is also preparing to train 22,000 teachers and educators in AI-supported teaching and assessment. (The National)
AI in the Workplace
UAE and Saudi lead workplace AI adoption
#UAE #workplace - HP’s 2026 Work Relationship Index found 78 percent of UAE knowledge workers use AI daily or weekly. AI agents are used by 60 percent of Saudi workers and 57 percent of UAE workers, with employees in both countries increasingly turning to AI first for workplace support. (Middle East AI News)
Workday opens Dubai office as AI use surges
#UAE #workplace - Workday has opened an office at Dubai Internet City as its research shows 90 percent of UAE employees use AI at least weekly, saving 3.6 hours on average. However, workers spend 3.4 hours correcting or rewriting outputs, underlining continued demand for human oversight. (Middle East AI News)
Customs
Morocco customs recovers 50M dirhams with AI
#Morocco #customs - Morocco’s customs authorities are using AI and digital risk analysis to identify imports that may have been undervalued. Audits covering goods worth nearly 650 million dirhams generated almost 50 million dirhams in additional revenue, highlighting the technology’s role in strengthening customs enforcement. (Hespress English)
Justice
Sharjah approves judicial AI governance guide
#UAE #justice - Sharjah Judicial Council has approved an AI Governance Guide setting requirements for the use of artificial intelligence across judicial systems. The framework addresses risk management, data protection, cybersecurity, auditing and human oversight, establishing controls for responsible deployment within the emirate’s justice sector. (WAM)
Data Protection
SDAIA opens personal data regulatory sandbox
#Saudi #dataprotection - SDAIA has opened registration for a Personal Data Protection Track within its Data Regulatory Sandbox. Private companies processing personal data can test innovative products, helping them comply with Saudi Arabia’s PDPL. Registration remains open for two months. (Saudi Press Agency)
Corporate
Optro opens Dubai hub for agentic GRC
#UAE #compliance - AI-powered governance, risk and compliance company Optro has opened a Dubai regional hub to serve customers across the Middle East and North Africa. (PR Newswire)