Jais 2 Arabic LLM released; Qatar forms national AI company
Middle East AI News weekly digest...
Good morning!
Welcome to this week’s Middle East AI News email digest, brought to you by big data analytics and AI company Presight!
With the World Summit AI in Doha, the Riyadh Motor Show, Abu Dhabi Finance Week, and the BRIDGE Summit taking place in Abu Dhabi, there’s no shortage of news this week!
Qatar continues to ramp up its efforts to compete in the AI race with the formation of Qai, a new national AI company (announced at World AI Summit). Few details are available, but a new $20 billion AI infrastructure deal with Brookfield will fall under the new company’s remit. Meanwhile, Jais 2 and Fanar 2 Arabic-centric AI models were announced this week (and K2 V2 was released at the end of last week).
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LLMs
Jais 2 elevates Arabic LLM performance
#UAE #Arabic – Inception, Cerebras and Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) have launched Jais 2, a 70-billion-parameter Arabic LLM trained on the largest Arabic-first dataset to date. The rebuilt model boosts reasoning and dialect fluency, with open-weight access on Hugging Face and a dedicated web chat. (Middle East AI News)
MBZUAI unveils K2 V2 open-source reasoning model
#UAE #reasoning – Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) has released K2 V2, a 70-billion-parameter open-source reasoning model with full transparency, including weights, training code and data. The model surpasses Qwen2.5-72B on key benchmarks, offers 512k-token context and introduces configurable reasoning-effort modes. (Middle East AI News)
Qatar unveils Fanar 2.0 sovereign Arabic AI
#Qatar #WorldSummitAI – Qatar has released Fanar 2.0 27B, a sovereign Arabic model with multimodal capabilities across text, speech and imagery. Built within a closed ecosystem, it protects sensitive data while improving dialect coverage and culturally grounded performance. (Middle East AI News)
Misraj AI debuts Kawn Arabic-first platform
#Saudi #Arabic – Misraj AI has launched Kawn, an Arabic-first platform designed to unlock institutional knowledge hidden in unstructured content. The stack includes advanced language and vision models, a multi-dialect engine, and Baseer, a tool converting scanned Arabic documents into structured data. (Middle East AI News)
Investment
Qatar establishes Qai as national AI company under QIA
#Qatar #WorldSummitAI– Qatar has launched Qai, a national AI company operating under the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) to build advanced digital ecosystems and AI infrastructure. Qai will invest in domestic and global high-performance computing and scalable AI systems aligned with Qatar National Vision 2030. (Middle East AI News)
Qai and Brookfield form $20 billion AI infrastructure JV
#Qatar #WorldSummitAI– Qatar’s new AI company Qai and Canada’s Brookfield are creating a $20 billion joint venture to develop AI infrastructure in Qatar and selected global markets. The partnership plans an integrated compute centre leveraging Brookfield’s large-scale infrastructure fund. (Middle East AI News)
BigBear.ai opens Abu Dhabi office for regional growth
#UAE #defence – BigBear.ai has opened its first Middle East office at the World Trade Centre Abu Dhabi, expanding its mission-ready AI capabilities for defence, intelligence and commercial sectors. The move follows partnerships with IHC-owned Vigilix and Easy Lease. (Middle East AI News)
Data Centres
Khazna plans 200MW AI-ready data centre in Saudi
#Saudi #datacentres – Khazna Data Centres has secured land in Dammam for a 200-megawatt AI-ready facility, its first site in Saudi Arabia (Zawya)
Education
Morocco to formalise scientific research
#Morocco #education – Morocco plans to overhaul higher education via Law 59.24, creating dedicated research institutions and new professional categories. The bill expands AI, data science and cybersecurity training, with 65 AI tracks now offered and 600 professors retrained nationwide. (Hespress EN)
Abu Dhabi launches TBZ AI Excellence scholarship
#UAE #education – Abu Dhabi has introduced the Tahnoon bin Zayed Scholarship in AI Excellence for Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) undergraduates. The six-year programme will support around 350 students, bolstering national AI skills and attracting global talent. (Middle East AI News)
Agriculture
MBZUAI launches agriculture and AI institute
#UAE #agritech – Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) has created the Institute for Agriculture and Artificial Intelligence to enhance global food security. It will develop agricultural LLMs, multimodal diagnostic tools and voice-based advisory systems for smallholder farmers, supported by a new global agricultural data corpus. (MBZUAI)
Banking
HSBC UAE, Presight partner on AI deployment
#UAE #finance – HSBC UAE and Presight have agreed a partnership to embed AI across core banking operations. The collaboration targets risk, compliance and advanced analytics, supporting the UAE’s financial transformation agenda and improving data-driven decision-making across the bank. (Middle East AI News)
Urban Mobility
Yango, noon to scale autonomous robot delivery in GCC
#UAE #logistics – Yango Group and noon have formed a strategic partnership to deploy autonomous delivery robots across the GCC, beginning with noon Minutes orders in Dubai. Yango’s fully electric robots, already tested over 1,500 km, now operate commercially in Sobha Hartland with plans for wider rollout. (Khaleej Times)
China’s QCraft targets Saudi autonomous driving market
#Saudi #robotaxis – China’s QCraft plans to enter Saudi Arabia’s autonomous driving market following its debut at Riyadh’s Global CommoMotion Summit. The firm will launch pilot and investment projects after market assessment. (Arab News)
inDrive, Ai Driver to pilot autonomous ride-hailing in Saudi
#Saudi #robotaxis– inDrive and Ai Driver have signed an MoU, endorsed by the Transport General Authority (TGA), to deploy autonomous ride-hailing services starting in Riyadh and later Jeddah. Supported by WeRide’s technology, the pilot targets a launch in H1 2026 and aligns with Vision 2030 smart mobility goals. (inDrive)
Aviation
Dubai partners on AI air-traffic research
#UAE #aviation – Dubai Air Navigation Services (DANS) and Emirates Aviation University have signed a research agreement to develop AI-driven air-traffic management prototypes. (Zawya)
Great roundup of the sovereign AI buildout happening across the Gulf. The Qai + Brookfield $20B infrastructur deal is particularly telling since it signals a shift from just training models to owning the entire compute stack. Jais 2's 70B parameter scale is impressive, but the real bet seems to be on closed ecosystems like Fanar that keep sensitive data onshore. Curious wheather the regional dialect coverage actually moves enterprise adoption or if it stays mostly symbolic.