This was the week that Saudi Aramco completed its $2.6 billion acquisition of a 49% stake in Saudi AI company HUMAIN, while Abu Dhabi signed four AI agreements with OpenAI, including a deal making ADNOC the first energy company to run OpenAI frontier models.
In other news, HUMAIN took control of Aramco-backed cloud company CNTXT; Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority targeted AED 300 million in annual AI added value; and the UAE launched an AED 9 million government AI challenge. Meanwhile, a new survey found that 85% of UAE workers use AI but 67% fear job losses; Bahrain advanced plans for an AI-native wholesale bank; and Egypt’s TokenAI released an open-source dataset containing 50,000 reasoning records for AI model builders.
Here are this week’s biggest AI news stories!
Sunday, November 1st
🔥 Aramco completes 49% acquisition of Saudi AI firm HUMAIN
Saudi national oil company pays $2.6 billion for stake in HUMAIN; PIF keeps 51%
🔥 Dubai RTA targets AED 300 million in AI added value per year
Roads & Transport Authority moves half its work to AI agents
Monday, November 2nd
🔊 Listen to Monday’s Daily News Minute
🔥 Abu Dhabi signs four AI deals with OpenAI
ADNOC becomes first energy firm to run OpenAI frontier models
🔥 UAE launches AED 9M government AI challenge
Nine winning agentic AI projects will share the prize pot
Tuesday, November 3rd
🔊 Listen to Tuesday’s Daily News Minute
🔥 HUMAIN takes over Aramco-backed cloud firm CNTXT
CNTXT becomes part of HUMAIN, following Aramco’s 49% stake in HUMAIN
🔥 Bahrain plans AI-native wholesale bank
Central Bank grants in-principle approval to new AI banking venture
🔥 AI use at DIFC firms hits 71%, doubling since 2024
Only 14% of DIFC-registered firms have AI agents in deployment
Wednesday, November 4th
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🔥 MBZUAI startup open-sources fast open decision model
Cerno 9B from Apertix ranks second among open models under 25B parameters
🔥 Terra Invest backs Abu Dhabi AI firm AIREV
Joint projects target wealth management and healthcare
Thursday, November 5th
🔊 Listen to Thursday’s Daily News Minute
🔥 85% of UAE workers use AI, but 67% fear job losses - survey
Only 26% of executives say their firm has a clear AI vision, versus 35% globally
🔥 Cairo ICT puts AI infrastructure on the agenda
Third AIDC² Expo opens alongside the 30th Cairo ICT (7-10 November)
Friday, November 6th
🔊 Listen to Friday’s Daily News Minute
🔥 TokenAI releases 50k reasoning records for AI builders
Egyptian developer open-sources ‘The Forge Reasoning’ dataset for model builders
Saturday, November 7th
🔊 Listen to Saturday’s Daily News Minute
[ This summary was AI written and human edited ]