From innovation to impact: uncovering the key drivers powering Abu Dhabi's digital economy

[Music] I'll kind of dive right into the discussion um I'd like to start off with uh Omar yourself and let's talk a little bit about the the current trends uh in the Innovation ecosystem in Dubai so firstly thank you so much when we look at the digital economy in Abu Dhabi and the UAE the reason why we're so AI ready in um Abu daab in UA is the fundamental principles of the region having the first Ministry of AI the first University of AI and these are examples of Trends in which we're incubating and accelerating AI economy scale in a big way when you look at worldwide Technologies one of the largest privately owned technology companies in the world us Centric and we've made our International Hub uh Abu Dhabi as a whole that is because we've seen the similarities and the synergies in which uh us being an AI leader in driving AI globally it sits perfectly well with Abu Dhabi and UAE being the very clear Future prooof Vision and strategy which is fueled by Innovation and incubating a whole Behemoth of value around AI Innovation and the infrastructure ructure has really Quantum leaped other Legacy areas so in my opinion we are striving towards a very AI ready economy and that has attracted true leadership around the world from the incredible leadership from the UAE that has embraced it invested heavily and provided the best platform for organizations like worldwide Technologies to make this our International H Hub and I truly believe believe the AI economy will be in Abu Dhabi as the Global Hub as a whole uh Professor Maran we all know Khalifa University is such a tighten uh within the Abu Dhabi ecosystem so that would be really interested hearing sort of your thoughts around you know the current trends in The Innovation ecosystem in alabi from an educational institution perspective yeah so um a lot of things have happened the last three years as you know um there was a setup of what we call the advanced technology research Council in Abu Dhabi with three pillars one called the Technology Innovation Institute that was part of that uh Journey now I'm in Khalifa since a couple of months Aspire and Venture one and what we saw in the last three years is a massive investment today in various domains related to technology of course uh as Omar was saying AI has been at the center of a lot of things uh quite recently um the technology inovation Institute and it was part of that Story released the first uh basically large language model in Arabic called nor and just um now last year uh we've been hearing basically about uh the next large language model large language model which was ranked top one basically as an open source model in the world called Falcon and just yesterday there was also an announcement of a company related to that and so what's interesting is that we're seeing a very nice story being built here where we're having research institutes which are creating breakthroughs in terms of Technology Falcon being one of them and now recently also companies basically where the tech transfer is built on those companies and now going on that company that was announced yesterday by the way is called a71 and so I think this is a great momentum that we're seeing and um there was an an article in Economist uh a couple of days ago say an economist is known basically to at least proofread its article saying that the uee is basically the third I would say Innovative economy in the AI realm us being the first China being the second so that's also testimony of basically the kind of work which is being done at University level also um there's been a lot of research intensive universities I think I saw the shift from going more on education perspective to more research intensive Khalifa is one and bzu is one um NYU Abu Dhabi is also another one and we're seeing seeing many universities that are not just looking at rankings in terms of Publications but also looking now at how to do the tech transfer of what is being done in the labs of the various professors and researchers those institutions Dred I would love to hear your take on this absolutely thank you so much for the organizing the panel so how I see from my angle is let's say how we see the innovation in in general coming and how this impact the digital economy so it's a multitude of parameters that you know contribute part of it start always with the Academia because where we build Talent we build research fundamental research that can help later on to build knowledge for the country to drive and then the second part going to the startup ecosystem where our fast mover very fastpaced to innovate less constrainted and that you know what have been happening here in Abu Dhabi and the UAE example of H 71 and other ecosystem so all the ecosystem available around the startups is available right now and then when we want to scale the startup we need another bigger ecosystem that is the large Enterprise all the big customers in the world and that's why the companies like wwt where Omar is here is helping to take innovative ideas that they are very fast in the execution to a larger scale by accessing to customer to labs to testing to Partners in order to do it fast and if we don't have the the whole uh let's say pieces coming to in place it going to always you know slow not working perfectly so I believe what's happening today in the UAE and in Abu Dhabi is we were able to put all the pieces together in one ecosystem where everyone is contributing but also everyone is benefiting much more than contributing by all working together from Academia from capital from big companies to startups so that's uh how we see it amazing So speaking of uh everybody contributing and collaborating we've seen the impact of you know public private sector partnership on the economies globally and you know speaking of example sitting here in adgm we've seen the impact of you know giants like adgm and H 71 on Abu dhabi's economy so Professor Marwan I would love to hear your perspective on the impact of collaboration you know between Educational Institute Corporation ations are there any specific success stories or examples you'd like to talk about yeah of course um um first of all basically the the collaboration in general are based basically on the capability of getting at this at the sameeh how knowhow but also external funding to form the talents that we're having and of course a lot of of of effort has been done at least at the Abu Dhabi level because that's uh basically the the place which I know very well in of course funding the different institutions especially universities for example tii has been very good research arm from that point of view in basically building some bridges with many universities in funding large um programs on a on a large scale I'm at the moment basically running a 6G Center we're opening also what we call a 6G chair and a 6G chair is a very good example where uh there's some effort to attract top talent talents coming for one year to two years working here in the UAE bringing their Network and basically being able to form our students basically and and and having basically the capability to do phds in collaborations and I think that's at the heart every type of collaboration that you're doing either with industry or even with Academia is extremely important to get basically the knowledge and the latest knowledge and knowhow and I think the trick is now being well done at the moment in terms of how these things are being built and how these research programs within a threeyear to fiveyear time frames where phds are formed Within These programs Dr Abid your perspective yeah uh so uh when you see from The Innovation part and the Academia so it's always I remember back in the time when you know the launch of mbz University everyone was you know saying that you know AI University Standalone don't doing mathematics physics engineering people were not understanding how big the AI will be and how specializ it it going to come over time so now we see even in the AI now we are start having disciplines generative Ai and even with generative AI Professor Maran can talk a lot about this we have subdisciplines so now everyone start understanding what happened at that time that if you want to thrive you have to have specialization and having that very specialized Talent available in the country that's faster in the long term the whole Innovation ecosystem and from there if we have the unities we're going to attract students abroad coming to the country and then they will start working then they will bring you know their Network coming in but also in the university is not only about the student but also all the researchers professors coming all over the world so an example of tii where we have I think more around a thousand researchers coming from all over the world coming to Abu Dhabi and that's if you see just the second level Network we are talking about tens of thousands of of all smart talent that we can bring to the country so at the end you know everything start with the Academia education showing that there are fundamental changes happening in this country and then we built on top of that so that's why the word of Academia Innovation and how can support and benefit to the both the tech startup ecosystem but also the large companies in term of resourcing that's I think really important for driving the economy and the digital economy forward so talking about driving the digital economy forward I think I'm all I'm hearing is opportunities opportunities opportunities so starting with you I think my next question is going to be around that you know how do you see what kind of opportunities or challenges do you see for the Abu Dhabi digital economy let's say in the coming years and how can sort of stakeholders address them effectively so I think the number one thing is when you look at the digital economy of Abu Dhabi we have as the world's largest privately owned technology company have the biggest Innovation Hub incubator we've made our home Abu Dhabi from an international perspective and from that we're already incubating startups we've driving Abu Dhabi based startup accelerating time to Market accelerating innovation in a heterogeneous way and we've been successful doing that with Dr Abid with open Innovation we've been successful with the the whole tii area the AI 17 G4 to the whole ecosystem as a whole because it's all propelled with the right platform a platform which this incredible leadership has given with a very future proof Viewpoint and then where we've driven in is the the cultural alignment is correct and where you've got the cultural alignment correct where you have the best practices in place the best facilities the safest city to live it's growing and it's creating a digital economy but the same way way it's driving the Silicon value ecosystem and values that Silicon Valley has done so with that in mind you end up accelerating Innovation and we've done that in the last 18 months by establishing our Global Hub here and it's not a regional Hub it's a Global Hub because Abu dhabi's economy is a Global Hub it's the capital of capitals and it's enabled through the AI destination because it's seen as the third biggest pillar in AI so when you're looking at those areas and you're seeing the facilities the infrastructure the diversity as well as the Readiness from an AI point of view we have brought our labs in here we have brought the ecosystem worked with the leadership and we've already done test results which have been very very impactful such as working with ai7 to look at the Falcon llm and scale it how do we drive the digital economy bringing these best of class people together using ww wt's Labs our Advanced Technology Center and enabling maiden emirats and I think all of these ingredients as long as we keep striving collaborating and accelerating Innovation this will continue to strive and this will continue to make sure that the UAE is always number one with AI and that's why we truly believe that and we're here today and we have done examples of that with open Innovation with Khalifa diversity as well and the other sectors and the results are now seen the results are now at a global scale where Excellence is patroled and results from a proof of concept perspective is scaling in a big economy way you're seeing large hyperscaler AI companies out of the digital economy of Abu Dhabi striving in the US striving in in in the global presence and also competing Vulcan llm is Best in Class you know we've invested heavily to bring during our 33 years of innovation and building the fortune 80s AI capabilities all the hyperscalers largest hyperscalers in the world we drive the AI and what have we done we' made our home Abu Dhabi there's a reason for that it's Talent it's culture it's a future proof vision and it's true Innovation which allows time to Market in a very accelerated but incredibly Fair Way and that's what I love the core values align and from a cultural point of view it's very exciting when you have the ability to move at agility which other economies don't amazing uh I would love to continue this conversation I've got many more questions planned but that's uh all the time we have for today uh thank you so much to my wonderful panelist a big round of applause audience thank you so much thank you Omar thank you Dr AB thank you professor one thank you to the audience