TII unveils new Falcon models; SDAIA building 480MW data centre

Middle East AI News weekly digest...

Good morning!

Welcome to this week’s Middle East AI News email digest - the first issue of 2026, brought to you by big data analytics and AI company Presight!

The region’s AI ecosystem seems to have hit the ground running this year with plenty of news breaking during the last few days. We also have an announcement of our own to share this week: Middle East AI News has partnered with AI Everything Middle East and Africa, which takes place on February 11th and 12th in Cairo! Egypt’s AI ecosystem really seems to have energised during the past year, so its exciting to be working with the Ai Everything team on this.

Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi’s TII made two announcements this week: a new Falcon-H1 reasoning model and a new family of Falcon H1 Arabic models! Scroll down for more news from Red Sea Global, SDAIA, Borouge, VentureSouq and others!

Thanks again to our Strategic Sponsor Presight! If you haven’t already, do check out Presight’s website here!

Wishing you and yours a happy, healthy and prosperous 2026!

/Carrington

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AI Models

TII unveils Falcon-H1 Arabic language models

#UAE #LLMs – Technology Innovation Institute (TII) has anounced Falcon-H1 Arabic, a high-performance family of Arabic large language models built on a hybrid Mamba-Transformer architecture. The models outperform many other Arabic LLMs and support long-context understanding of up to 256,000 tokens. (Middle East AI News)

TII releases compact Falcon H1R reasoning model

#UAE #reasoning – Technology Innovation Institute (TII) has released Falcon H1R 7B, a compact open-source reasoning model delivering leading results across mathematics, coding and reasoning benchmarks. Despite its smaller size, the model offers fast performance and lower energy demands, widening access to advanced AI capabilities. (Middle East AI News)

Data Centres

Saudi breaks ground on world’s largest government data centre

#Saudi #datacentres – Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) has begun construction of the Hexagon Data Centre, a 480-megawatt Tier IV facility set to become the world’s largest government-owned data centre. The complex will strengthen data sovereignty and support Vision 2030 digital government and AI ambitions. (Middle East AI News)

Funding

Red Sea Global backs new AI venture fund

#Saudi #funds – Red Sea Global and ADGM-regulated Bunat Ventures have launched a new AI-focused venture fund, combining capital with access to live tourism infrastructure. The initiative will help startups pilot, validate and scale AI within real-world hospitality and destination environments. (Middle East AI News)

VentureSouq leads $2m MilkStraw AI Seed round

#UAE #funding - UAE and San Francisco-based cloud optimisation startup MilkStraw AI has raised $2 million in Seed funding led by VentureSouq, with Ibtikar Fund and M Capital participating. Founded in 2023, the company helps businesses cut cloud costs. (Middle East AI News)

Policy & Law

Qatar embeds AI into legislative drafting

#Qatar #government – Qatar’s Council of Ministers Secretariat General has launched the first phase of its Smart Legislative Advisor programme with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. The AI system automates comparative legal analysis, constitutional compliance and linguistic review, accelerating lawmaking while improving legislative quality and consistency. (Middle East AI News)

Abu Dhabi expands AI across correctional system

#UAE #justice – Abu Dhabi Judicial Department has approved a suite of AI-driven projects for correctional centres, including smart security, behavioural detection and automated inmate request systems linked to courts. The initiatives aim to boost safety, efficiency and rehabilitation. (Zawya)

Qatar court tightens rules on AI in litigation

#Qatar #LegalTech – The Qatar International Court has issued a new procedural directive regulating the use of AI in litigation. The framework strengthens verification requirements for AI-assisted submissions, reinforcing judicial integrity and setting a regional benchmark for responsible AI adoption within court proceedings. (Qatar Tribune)

Digital Transformation

Oman signs MoU to boost digital transformation projects

#Oman #digital - Oman’s National Centre for Statistics and Information has signed an MoU with Omantel subsidiary Future Cities to advance digital transformation. The partnership focuses on data cleaning, AI-driven solutions and IoT technologies to improve data quality, support smart cities and strengthen decision-making across government. (Oman News Agency)

Security

Royal Oman Police launches AI future technologies centre

#Oman #PublicSectorTech – Royal Oman Police has established a new Artificial Intelligence and Future Technologies Centre to accelerate digital transformation. The centre will oversee AI strategy, governance and ethics, while expanding advanced analytics for forecasting, decision support and enhanced public digital services. (Oman Observer)

Kuwait launches AI platform to combat cybercrime faster

#Kuwait #cybersecurity - Kuwait has unveiled an AI-powered digital platform to accelerate cybercrime reporting and response, enabling instant analysis and real-time coordination with Interpol and global social media firms. Officials say the system enhances user protection, legal compliance and national cybersecurity resilience. (Kuwait Times)

Manufacturing

Borouge completes autonomous operations proof of concept

#UAE #petrochemicals - Borouge has completed a live proof of concept for AI-powered autonomous operations at its Al Ruwais facility with Honeywell. Trials showed potential 20% efficiency gains, 20% downtime reduction and up to 15% lower operating costs, supporting its $575 million digital value target. (Middle East AI News)

Competitions

Saudi opens GenAI hackathon registration

#Saudi #hackathon - Amazon Web Services (AWS), with Manara and Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, has opened registration for a Generative AI hackathon at the Saudi Tech Forum. The initiative targets national talent development in cloud and advanced digital skills. (Saudi Press Agency)

Events

Middle East AI News partners with AI Everything MEA

#Egypt #AiEverything – Middle East AI News and Ai Everything have announced a partnership for AI Everything Middle East and Africa, which takes place on 11–12 February in Cairo. The debut exhibition and conference is hosted by Egypt’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in partnership with ITIDA. (AI Everything MEA)

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[ This newsletter was both AI edited & human edited ]