Good morning!
Welcome to this week’s Middle East AI News email digest!
Another busy week as we begin to enter the Middle East’s cooler season. In today’s edition, MBZUAI launches what it says is the world’s largest fully open AI model fleet; HUMAIN unveils a 428-billion-parameter Arabic frontier model while preparing for a possible IPO and seeking $2.5 billion for data centre expansion; Egypt moves ahead with a NVIDIA-powered AI data centre; the UAE prepares to launch FedAI for agentic government services; and Algeria crates government committees to implement its national AI strategy.
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And don’t forget Ai Everything Abu Dhabi is taking place in a little over three weeks! So, if you haven’t yet registered for the event, here’s the link!
Thanks for reading!
/Carrington
AI Models
IFM releases largest fully-open model fleet
#UAE #AImodels - The Institute of Foundation Models formed by Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) has released K2 Horizon, a six-model open fleet ranging from 0.9 billion to 375 billion parameters. The suite publishes weights, code, training data and methods under Apache 2.0, while targeting devices from smartwatches to enterprise servers. (Middle East AI News)
HUMAIN unveils 428bn-parameter arabic model
#Saudi #LEAP5 - Saudi Arabia’s HUMAIN last week unveiled humain-m3, a 428-billion-parameter Arabic frontier model developed with China’s MiniMax. Pre-trained on more than one trillion native-Arabic tokens, the mixture-of-experts system topped the average score across seven public Arabic benchmarks and is available in research preview on HUMAIN Node. (Middle East AI News)
TokenAI launches 16bn-parameter cyber model
#Egypt #cybersecurity - Alexandria-based TokenAI has released Horus Cyber Nano 1.0, a 16-billion-parameter multimodal model for cybersecurity and secure coding, with open weights for local deployment. TokenAI says it beats GPT-4o on some vision and reasoning benchmarks, while its larger Horus Cyber model remains paused pending additional safety requirements in Egypt. (Middle East AI News)
R&D
TII wins Qualcomm grant for edge aviation AI
#UAE #aviation - Abu Dhabi’s Technology Innovation Institute (TII) has become the first Middle East organisation to receive Qualcomm’s Tech for Good Grant. TII will adapt its SADEED predictive-maintenance platform for Qualcomm’s Dragonwing IQ9 edge processor, enabling cargo drones and future eVTOL aircraft to detect component degradation. (Middle East AI News)
Investment
HUMAIN seeks $2.5 billion for data centre expansion
#Saudi #datacentres - Saudi Arabia’s HUMAIN is seeking $2.5 billion to finance its data centre expansion through a dedicated fund managed by BSF Capital. The vehicle would back an initial 250 megawatts, potentially mixing debt and equity, as HUMAIN targets one gigawatt of data centre capacity by 2027. (Middle East AI News)
HUMAIN starts preparations for possible IPO
#Saudi #IPO - HUMAIN has begun building an IPO preparation team, signalling groundwork for a possible stock-market listing. The company is recruiting for investor strategy and pitch preparation roles as it expands Saudi ambitions in AI infrastructure, data centres and large-scale computing. (Bloomberg)
Agentic AI
UAE readies FedAI for agentic government systems
#UAE #government - The UAE is preparing to launch FedAI, a federal technical ecosystem for building and operating agentic AI across government. The Council for Artificial Intelligence and Development has also approved the implementation phase of the wider Agentic AI for UAE Government Project, (Middle East AI News)
EMB Global named OpenAI select partner
#UAE #partnerships - Abu Dhabi-based EMB Global has been named an OpenAI Select Partner, joining the first firms appointed under OpenAI’s new Partner Network. EMB will combine GPT-5.6 models with its enterprise platforms for secure agentic AI deployments. (Middle East AI News)
Infrastructure
OmniOps and HPE plan sovereign Saudi systems
#Saudi #infrastructure - Saudi AI infrastructure company OmniOps has signed an agreement with HPE to build sovereign AI systems for government and regulated enterprises. The project will combine locally manufactured hardware with Saudi-developed software, aiming to keep deployments and sensitive workloads entirely within the Kingdom’s domestic infrastructure. (Middle East AI News)
Vodafone Egypt builds national AI factory
#Egypt #datacentres - Vodafone Egypt and Cassava Technologies have launched Egypt’s first national AI factory using NVIDIA GPUs and sovereign infrastructure. The platform will provide GPU-as-a-Service to government and businesses while keeping data inside Egypt for compliance and cybersecurity. (Africa AI News)
Education
Jordan gets $3.5m grant for school digital plan
#Jordan #schools - Jordan will use a $3.5 million World Bank grant to prepare a digital transformation plan for about 3,500 public schools. The work will assess connectivity, devices and infrastructure and also plan an EdTech and Artificial Intelligence Innovation Centre. (Middle East AI News)
Google revives free Gemini offer for Arab students
#MENA #GenAI - Google has relaunched its year-long free Gemini student offer across Arab markets, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan. Eligible university students aged 18 and over can access Gemini 3.1 Pro, research and study tools, image and video generation, with 400 gigabytes of storage. (Google)
Kurdistan launches first AI Olympiad with $30,000
#Iraq #innovation - Iraq’s Kurdistan Region has launched its first AI Olympiad in Erbil, offering $30,000 in prizes. Participants will spend six weeks developing practical AI solutions, with winners also receiving opportunities in South Korea, as regional authorities seek to build local technology skills and applied innovation capacity. (Kurdistan24)
Banking
AI-native Mal opens waitlist after $230M seed funding
#UAE #AInative - Abu Dhabi fintech Mal has opened a global waitlist for an AI-native Islamic finance platform, backed by $230 million in seed funding. The company plans multi-market launches spanning payments, financing, investment and business services, positioning the UAE-based venture to target digital Islamic financial services internationally. (Zawya)
AI Policy
Egypt and OECD develop five-year AI strategy
#Egypt #AIstrategy - Egypt is working with the OECD on a five-year AI strategy focused on responsible adoption, workforce skills, government standards and secure data exchange, Planning and Economic Development Minister Ahmed Rostom said whilst speaking at AIM Congress in Dubai. (Middle East AI News)
Algeria advances national artificial intelligence strategy
#Algeria #AIstrategy - Algeria has created five committees covering infrastructure, financing, language models and training to implement its national artificial intelligence strategy, creating. The government also plans a national AI and data research centre, aims to train 50,000 specialists by 2030, and will develop AI-based public-sector technology systems. (Dzair Tube)
Morocco union seeks AI job protections
#Morocco #jobs - Morocco’s National Federation of Call Centers and Offshoring Professions is urging government action as AI reshapes outsourcing. It wants national retraining, recognised digital certifications and public support tied to job protection, amid estimates that up to 4.6 million Moroccan jobs could be affected by AI by 2030. (Middle East AI News)
Oman to add standards for AI and EVs
#Oman #standards - Oman is expanding technical standards work into artificial intelligence, electric vehicles and renewable energy. Authorities in Muscat are proposing GCC standards covering AI environmental sustainability and data quality for machine learning, broadening the Sultanate’s standards agenda as emerging technologies become more central to regional industry and regulation. (Oman Observer)
Sentiment
Egypt AI awareness triples to 65% since 2023
#Egypt #Research - AI awareness in Egypt has risen from 22% in 2023 to 65% in 2026, according to a Cabinet IDSC (Information and Decision Support Center) survey. Among users, 93.9% rated AI outputs positively, although concerns around privacy and potential job losses remain widespread as adoption expands. (Middle East AI News)
[ This newsletter was both AI edited & human edited ]