Read time: 2 & 8 minutes

Hi & Welcome to the first weekly edition of Tech A newsletter! This newsletter aims to give insights on technology solutions & business impact in the region.

What can you expect? Each week, I will provide personal & third-party insights to bridge between technology & business use cases, share updates on the regional tech ecosystem (starting with the GCC region), highlight funding and business opportunities, as well as interesting upcoming events.

⚡ Your 2-Minute Summary

🧠 Things I learned from worldwide AI experts at the Open Source AI Summit:

I knew I gained value when I filled multiple pages of notes & stayed seated until the end! Here are my highlights! (click or scroll down for more details)

• 🧠 New Reasoning Approaches:

  • FunSearch: Creates verifiable, transparent algorithms for complex optimization (logistics, energy)

  • Ruliad: Makes AI reasoning steps visible and modifiable, unlike GPT-4

• 💻Edge AI Development:

  • MediaPipe (Google): Framework for rapid edge AI with enhanced privacy

  • Pro tip: Leverage existing tools to validate your tech product ideas faster & building specialized models still beats generalized ones.

• 🧬Life Sciences Progress:

  • Key Challenge: Data availability is limiting biotech innovation

  • Solution: Align to Innovate launching world's largest open biotech dataset in 2025. You could contribute or access it freely in 2025.

  • Impact: Could replicate AlphaFold's protein structure success across other life science areas

• 💰Funding Highlight:

  • What if you had an AI product idea and needed worldwide experts to support you? Checkout Stem AI Fund: $250K investment + expert support from Meta, DeepMind leaders

📊 MENA Tech Updates:

• Infrastructure Growth:

  • UAE data center market: AED 9.7bn by 2029 (10% CAGR). Many businesses will emerge from it, like specialized data center cleaning & maintenance.

• Major Funding Initiatives:

  • Dubai RDI Programme: AED 750M 3 year budget

    • Target: 600 startups, 120,000 jobs with a focus on AI, robotics, cognitive cities, healthcare

  • SEEDRA Ventures: New early-stage fund in Saudi Arabia for tech startups

• Early Stage Accelerator Program: SANDBOX is a 5-month accelerator for pre-Seed to Seed stage tech entrepreneurs by Oraseya Capital.

📅 Upcoming Events:

• 🚛 Logimotion 2024 to network and see the latest innovation on Logistics, mobility, and supply chain, on 10-11 December 2024, WTC, Dubai.

• Abu Dhabi Finance Week 9-12 Dec: flagship event where you can meet leaders, market experts and entrepreneurs from over 100 countries to explore the facets and power of financial, human and technological capital.

🤝 Community Corner:

• 🎉 Our first event: 'Blockchain & Web3: Practical Insights'. We covered: Web3 product development, UAE legal landscape, Insights on food traceability & decentralized financial systems

• 🔗 Register to join our next event at lu.ma/mena_make_events

💡 Latest advances in Open-source AI from worldwide experts

When I filled multiple pages of notes in a single day at the Open Source AI Summit in Abu Dhabi, I knew attending was the right decision. This unique AI-focused event brought together technology leaders from Meta, Google, and leading AI companies worldwide to share the latest advancements in AI capabilities. Here are my key takeaways:

🔍 Advances in AI Reasoning: FunSearch & Ruliad

The most exciting developments came in AI reasoning capabilities. Dr Alhussein from Google DeepMind (UK) presented FunSearch, which represents a breakthrough in how AI can make verifiable, new algorithms. Unlike traditional LLMs that can hallucinate, this approach finds proven solutions by searching for programs (how to solve) rather than direct answers. Here, we transition from predicting the next token (word, number..etc.) to creating a map of possible functions and generating new algorithms.

Dr Alhussein’s solution not only generates new algorithms, but these algorithms are interpretable and verifiable. These solutions target complex optimization problems like vehicle routing for last-mile delivery, energy load balancing, etc.

Potential Business Impact:

• Accelerates R&D across industries (drug discovery, materials science)

• Accelerate and automate algorithm discovery, optimization and program synthesis

• Improves resource allocation and operational efficiency

This breakthrough could transform how businesses approach complex optimization problems and scientific research, enabling AI to drive innovation rather than just assist actively.

Adding to this breakthrough, Ruliad presented their fascinating approach to implementing reasoning in AI. Their DeepThought model not only surfaces the reasoning steps of AI models (what GPT-4 does as a black box) but also allows control over model behavior through reasoning injections. Keep an eye out for their upcoming open-source model release.

What I’m thinking:

Beyond the AI hype, true AI experts recognize the limitations of traditional LLMs and are already building toward better reasoning & emerging capabilities. Both these approaches rely on a feedback loop (embedded or manual) to incrementally improve the results. As a third possible approach, quantum computing can provide the next leap in reasoning. Current state-of-the-art, realistic usage of Quantum computing is to pair it with classical computing in a hybrid model to gain the best of both worlds. Some companies like Qamia, our business partner, offer to solve complex optimization problems using their decades of experience building complex mathematical solutions paired with AI or Hybrid computing. Others, like D-Wave, are already providing value with their quantum annealing technology.

🤖 Edge AI Product Development with MediaPipe

As someone who has led multiple product development projects, I was particularly interested in Dr. Armand Joulin's (Research Director, Google DeepMind, France) presentation. He explained how Google's MediaPipe framework, combined with its suite of open-source models, can significantly accelerate Edge AI product development and deployment.

For technical leaders and developers, MediaPipe (link) is essentially a powerful open-source toolkit with pre-built machine learning solutions, for example:

• Face detection

• Pose tracking

• Hand gesture recognition

• Object detection

Dr. Armand's expert tip: creating specialized models is the best choice considering output quality, costs, and model size.

🧬 Life Sciences: The Data Challenge

The summit highlighted how data availability is the primary bottleneck in accelerating life science breakthroughs. While successes like AlphaFold II demonstrate the power of large, high-fidelity datasets, we need more reliable and consistent data to create similar breakthroughs.

Align to Innovate is a non-profit experimenting with a new paradigm for funding, collecting, and sharing such datasets. Their approach will revolutionize:

• Drug discovery processes

• Novel therapeutic protein design

• Biological engineering success rates

• Industrial enzyme development

Their work doesn’t stop at the dataset collection, they aim to develop AI-driven computational biology tools to understand and engineer proteins. One example would be protein language modeling and generation, similar to how LLMs work with text.

Important notes: their first datasets will be available in 2025 and open to the public! You can contribute by submitting your data on their platform. Check their website for more.

The Data challenge can become a business opportunity: while the data is a challenge, existing & new tech companies can build relationships with institutions that own the data to build unique AI models with a significant competitive edge. A specific example would be PureHealth in the UAE.
You can also specialize in collecting, anonymizing, and selling such data for others to build their AI models. Data is the new oil!

💰 Expert-led, AI early-stage fund for Tech entrepreneurs: Stem AI

Stem AI, a UK-based venture capital firm, has launched a unique early-stage fund. What sets them apart is their team composition – AI & Product Experts from Meta, DeepMind, Google, and HuggingFace.

Stem AI is a UK-based venture capital firm specializing in early-stage AI companies. Their team composition makes this fund unique – AI & Product Experts from Meta, DeepMind, Google, and HuggingFace. It's more than an investment; it's the expertise & deep insights into creating AI products for multi-million users.

They offer:

• $250,000 in SAFE investment + Cloud credits

• Regular checkpoints with world-class AI advisors

• Annual community summit in Paris

For more information: Link

💡Related Market insights I’m reading:

• AI, Today report by Dataiku & Databricks -(link)

  The second-annual “AI, Today” report, created by Dataiku & Databricks, is where 400 senior AI professionals share how they’re navigating the rapidly evolving world of GenAI. Inside, you’ll uncover:

  • The ROI strategies leaders are using to maximize GenAI investments.

  • How organizations are scaling AI capabilities to transform operations.

  • Key barriers and actionable ways to overcome them.

• Mckinsey’s State of Gen AI in the Middle East (link):

  Research shows that regional organizations have been quick to adopt generative AI, but very few are yet to see much benefit. Those that are demonstrate what it takes in this report.

📊 MENA Tech Updates

UAE data center market to reach AED 9.7 bn by 2029 (link):

Today, the UAE has 38 data center facilities. The spike in data centers also leads to increased business for specialized companies.
💡 Business opportunity: Growing demand for specialized services (maintenance, cleaning). Example: Hitches & Glitches (H&G) reporting a significant uptick in demand for specialized cleaning

A new early-stage tech fund (Seedra Ventures)

SEEDRA Ventures Fund II is an early-stage, sector-agnostic venture capital fund that aims to foster innovation, support entrepreneurs, and generate impactful economic value across industries. Visit their website: https://seedra.com/#

Dubai's AED 750M R&D Program: What You Need to Know

📊 Key Information

• AED 750M ($204M) investment over 3 years for Dubai RDI Programme

• Target: AED 20B annual GDP contribution by 2033

• Creation of 120,000 jobs and support for 600 startups

• Launch of Institute for Future Research

• Dubai RDI Grant Initiative funding 20 research projects

• Focus areas: AI, robotics, cognitive cities, healthcare, life sciences

💡 What This Means For You

• Tech Companies: New research collaboration opportunities and R&D funding access

• Startups: Position for support programs and funding within 600-startup initiative

• Professionals: Major career opportunities in R&D, innovation, and tech sectors

• Researchers: Access to new institute and grant funding for priority sectors

• Business Leaders: Prepare for expanded market opportunities in Dubai's growing innovation ecosystem

🔗 More Information: https://www.middleeastainews.com/p/200-million-budget-dubai-rdi-research. Credit: Carrington Malin (Middle East AI Newsletter)

Upcoming Accelerator Program: SANDBOX

SANDBOX is a 5-month accelerator for pre-Seed to Seed stage tech entrepreneurs by Oraseya Capital.
Key information:

• Requirements: MVP and at least one Co founder living in UAE

• $150,000 Investment + In-kind Credits: Over $1 million from partners.

• Support: Extensive workshops and 1:1 mentoring, Financial and legal diagnostics.

• Timeline: Application deadline January 5, 2025, start: Mid-February 2025.

• Duration: 5 months culminating in a pitch day to VCs and Angels across MENA.

To learn more: https://sandboxaccelerator.com/

🗓️ Upcoming Events

Logimotion 2024: Logistics & Innovation Tech

Logimotion 2024 promises to be the ultimate gathering for thought leaders, innovators, startups, and industry professionals within the global logistics and mobility ecosystem.
🎯 Key Features

• 📅 Event Details: December 10-11, 2024, Dubai WTC

• Focus: Logistics, mobility, and supply chain innovation

• Startup pitches & expert workshops + Free exhibition booths for innovative startups

• Reasons to attend: focused sector networking, industry & market insights.

📝 To learn more and register: Logimotion | 10 – 11 December 2024 | Za'abeel Hall 6, DWTC

Abu Dhabi Finance Week 2024: The Capital of Capital

ADFW 2024 brings together global financial leaders, tech innovators, entrepreneurs, and policymakers to explore the intersection of technology and business in the MENA region. The event features over 50 specialized events focused on digital innovation, fintech, AI and blockchain.

📍 Key Features
📆 Event Details: December 9-12, 2024, Abu Dhabi
Focus: Digital innovation, fintech, emerging technologies, and financial sector transformation
50+ focused sub-events across digital innovation, fintech & emerging tech Global financial leaders & tech innovators networking Expert discussions on technological advancements in finance
Reasons to attend: Industry networking, insights on technological transformation of finance, policy discussions.

📝 To learn more and register: ADFW

🤝 Community Corner

"🙏 'I just want to say thank you so much for the event…I've learned many things and it was an opportunity to meet brilliant people.' This made our first event worth it!

Last week, we hosted 'Blockchain & Web3: Practical Insights and Industry Impact', where Mohamed Mbarek Azzi shared business & technical insights from developing multiple blockchain products, including a non-custodial wallet for adults & juniors and a decentralized digital art marketplace.

Our interactive session covered: 💡
🔷 Introduction to web3 & blockchain
🔷Business use case: food traceability & decentralized financial systems
🔷On-the-ground insight on creating a web3 startup/product in UAE, including the legal landscape
🔷Best practices and things to avoid to increase your chances to success

UAE is the most forward-looking country in terms of web3 adoption. However, it's still trying to balance facilitating and regulating these innovations for consumer safety.
Missed this session but planning to build a blockchain product? Connect with Mohamed on LinkedIn for expert guidance.

Amine Rabehi

Find me on LinkedIn or Book a Free Call

🔍 Whenever you’re ready, here are 3 things I can help you with:

• Technology Solution/Product consultancy: I help you assess your product idea from a technological & business point of view. So far, I have built a network of professionals covering the MENA region in term of IP, Market Research & Complex AI solution development.

• Market entry strategy and support: understand the market, legal framework

• Tech Product Development Solutions: I’ve managed more than 15 tech product development projects (hardware & software). I help you go from idea to initial batch launch.