du, a leading UAE telecommunications and digital services provider, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Open Innovation AI, a UAE-based AI infrastructure and workload orchestration company, in a move aimed at accelerating the adoption of sovereign Agentic AI across government entities and enterprises.

The agreement, orchestrated in collaboration with the UAE Cyber Security Council (CSC), is designed to strengthen the country’s sovereign AI ecosystem by combining secure cloud infrastructure with advanced AI orchestration capabilities. The initiative will be delivered through du’s technology-focused sub-brand, du Tech, and aligns with the UAE’s broader digital transformation and national security priorities.

Read more-du unveils sovereign industrial AI platform: What UAE businesses need to know

The MoU was signed during the Digital Readiness Retreat 2026 in Dubai, one of the country’s leading forums focused on digital innovation and transformation. The agreement was executed by Jasim Al Awadi, chief ICT Officer at du, and Dr Abed Benaichouche, co-founder and CEO of Open Innovation AI, in the presence of Dr Mohamed Al Kuwaiti, head of the UAE Cyber Security Council.

Industry leaders said the partnership reflects the growing importance of sovereign AI infrastructure as governments and organizations seek to deploy advanced AI capabilities while maintaining control over data, computing resources, and regulatory compliance.

Building a secure foundation for Sovereign AI

A key component of the partnership is the integration of du Tech’s National Hypercloud platform with Open Innovation AI’s GPU orchestration and AI infrastructure management technology.

The collaboration is expected to provide public and private sector organisations with secure access to in-country AI computing resources, enabling them to deploy and scale autonomous Agentic AI workloads more efficiently while adhering to stringent regulatory and cybersecurity requirements.

The initiative follows the recent certification of du Tech’s National Hypercloud by the UAE Cyber Security Council, a milestone that positions the platform as a locally governed infrastructure capable of supporting the nation’s growing AI economy.

Dr Mohamed Al Kuwaiti, head of the UAE Cyber Security Council, highlighted the strategic significance of the initiative.

“Sovereign AI is a critical national security priority. Following our recent certification of du Tech’s National Hypercloud, this homegrown collaboration represents the secure in-country AI infrastructure orchestration the UAE requires to protect its data and digital future. The UAE Cyber Security Council remains committed to fostering an environment where AI is securely governed within UAE jurisdiction, and this initiative is a meaningful step toward elevating national AI innovation,” he said.

Focus on AI infrastructure and GPU orchestration

Under the terms of the MoU, both organizations will explore a range of collaboration opportunities, including the technical integration of du Tech’s National Hypercloud with Open Innovation AI’s platform to support GPU orchestration and advanced resource management capabilities.

The companies will also assess opportunities related to sovereign AI platform development, commercial deployment models, and joint go-to-market initiatives aimed at expanding the adoption of trusted AI services across the UAE.

The partnership comes as demand for AI computing infrastructure continues to grow globally, with organizations increasingly seeking scalable and secure environments capable of supporting advanced AI models and autonomous digital agents.

Jasim Al Awadi, chief ICT Officer at du, said the partnership represents an important step in building the infrastructure needed to support the next generation of AI-powered services.

“True digital sovereignty requires an infrastructure capable of powering tomorrow’s cognitive workloads today. By merging du Tech’s CSC-certified National Hypercloud with Open Innovation AI’s orchestration platform, we are delivering the foundational compute engine required for secure, in-country Agentic AI deployment. We are building the secure, compliant, and high-performance backbone that will allow UAE government entities and enterprises to deploy autonomous AI workforces with absolute confidence,” he said.

Supporting the UAE’s AI and digital transformation goals

As part of the collaboration, the two organizations will evaluate opportunities to establish sovereign AI and GPU orchestration capabilities on du Tech’s National Hypercloud infrastructure.

The goal is to provide organisations with secure and locally governed access to AI computing resources while supporting innovation across both public and private sector ecosystems. The initiative is expected to contribute to the development and deployment of AI solutions and autonomous AI agents designed to meet the UAE’s growing demand for trusted AI services.

Security, compliance, and data sovereignty are expected to remain central pillars of the project, ensuring that AI workloads, models, and sensitive information remain governed within UAE jurisdiction and aligned with national cybersecurity frameworks.

Dr Abed Benaichouche, co-founder and CEO of Open Innovation AI, said the agreement marks an important milestone in advancing the country’s sovereign AI ambitions.

“This MoU with du marks a meaningful step toward building the foundations of sovereign AI in the UAE. By bringing Open Innovation’s Sovereign AI Fabric together with du Tech’s National Hypercloud, we aim to give government entities and enterprises secure, in-country access to the compute that AI workloads demand, while keeping data, models, and infrastructure firmly within UAE jurisdiction. We are proud to work alongside du and the UAE Cyber Security Council to accelerate this national ambition,” he said.

The agreement further expands du’s growing ecosystem of AI-focused partnerships and reinforces the company’s role as a key sovereign infrastructure enabler through du Tech. With cybersecurity governance embedded at its core, the collaboration is expected to support the UAE’s long-term vision of building a secure, resilient, and globally competitive AI ecosystem.

Oil prices rose on Friday, paring sharp losses from the previous session, after Hezbollah rejected a new Lebanon ceasefire proposal and Oman’s Mina al Fahal terminal briefly suspended oil loadings following an explosion.

Brent crude futures rose 33 cents, or 0.35 per cent, to $95.36 a barrel after settling down 2.84 per cent in the previous session.

US West Texas Intermediate crude was at $93.06 a barrel, up 2 cents, or 0.02 per cent, following a 3.1 per cent loss on Thursday.

Both contracts are set to post their first weekly gain in three weeks, with WTI up more than 6 per cent, after fighting flared up in the Middle East as US-Iran war peace talks dragged on while traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, where a fifth of the world’s oil passes, remained limited.

Reuters reported on Friday that Oman’s Mina al Fahal terminal has suspended oil loading following an explosion near its single-buoy mooring (SBM) berths due to an alleged drone attack. Operations have since reportedly resumed, Bloomberg News reported.

Analysts have also flagged concerns of falling oil inventories globally that could cause a price spike in the third quarter.

Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem rejected on Thursday a US-brokered agreement between Israel and the Lebanese government to halt the fighting. Iran has made a ceasefire in Lebanon a condition for any peace deal with Washington.

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday he believed progress was being made between Israel and Lebanon and that Lebanon deserved to have peace.

“Any optimism remains heavily clouded by a tangled web of headlines and counter-headlines,” IG market analyst Tony Sycamore said in a note.

“From a technical perspective, as long as (WTI) crude oil remains above trendline support in the low $80s, the risks remain skewed to the upside.”

OPEC is sticking to its oil demand growth forecast of 1.2 million barrels per day for this year, Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais said on Thursday, despite the Middle East conflict and closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian oil exports have fallen to their lowest level in six years mainly due to the US naval blockade, according to shipping data, although weak demand in China has depressed prices for the oil.

Liverpool-born entrepreneur Adam Thornhill, now based in Dubai, first stepped into the UAE property market through a personal investment project in 2023, purchasing, renovating, and successfully flipping an office in Ajman for profit.

What began as a standalone investment quickly sparked a deeper interest in property development and the wider UAE real estate sector. Following the success of the project, Thornhill went on to establish L5 Properties, with the business now exploring multiple investment strategies including off-plan developments across Dubai and Ras Al Khaimah.

The company name itself also carries personal meaning. Thornhill named the business L5 Properties after the L5 postcode area where he grew up on Breck Road in Liverpool.

But while the project proved commercially successful, Thornhill says the experience also reinforced something more important to him than profit alone.

“I’ve always believed in the saying, ‘You don’t give to get,’” he explains. “To me, success in life isn’t measured purely by money or possessions, but by the positive impact you can have on people and causes that genuinely matter to you.”

As the Ajman office investment was the project that ultimately inspired the launch of L5 Properties, Thornhill decided to personally donate part of the profits to a number of charities and organisations that held personal meaning to him.

Among them was Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool, one of the UK’s leading children’s hospitals, which provides specialist care for children and young people across the country. The donation carried particular significance as Thornhill was born with clubfoot and spent a considerable amount of time there throughout his childhood.

He also made a personal donation to Cancer Research in memory of his nan, Maureen, who he lived with for several years growing up and who he credits as having a major influence on his life.

A donation was also made to the Royal Liverpool University Hospital in recognition of his mother, Tina Askew, who worked there as a nurse after following in the footsteps of her own mother, Sylvia.

Animal welfare also remained close to Thornhill’s heart. He chose to personally support RAK Animal Welfare Centre, dedicating the donation to his Patterdale mix, Penny, and recognising the importance pets and companionship can play in people’s lives. The cause also carried a personal connection through a dear friend’s rescue dog, Twirl, a Golden Retriever mix who was adopted from the centre.

While many investors focus solely on scaling portfolios and financial returns, Thornhill believes genuine fulfilment comes from building something that carries meaning beyond business itself.

“Property investment is not just about buildings or returns,” he says. “It’s about creating opportunities, building a future, and hopefully doing some good along the way.”

Optimistically looking ahead, Thornhill says that while there are already many major developers operating across the UAE, one day he would love to enter that space himself and focus on creating affordable housing for families.

“Whilst I don’t yet know exactly how the company will evolve, I’m excited about its future and the opportunities ahead,” he says. “For me, it’s about continuing to learn, grow, and hopefully build something that has a positive impact both commercially and personally.”

Dubai has launched a new initiative designed to make it significantly faster, simpler, and more cost-efficient for entrepreneurs to start and operate businesses in the emirate.

The Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism (DET) has introduced SME in a Box, a platform that brings together essential business services under a single access point, reducing the need for startups to independently navigate multiple providers during the early stages of setting up operations.

The initiative is part of Dubai’s broader push to strengthen its business environment and reinforce its position as a global hub for entrepreneurship and innovation.

A single gateway for essential business services

SME in a Box provides founders with a unified entry point to access a wide range of services required to launch and run a business. These include licensing support, banking, digital payments, logistics, telecommunications, and other core operational services delivered through a curated network of private-sector partners.

Read more-Dubai signs MoU to integrate SMEs into property sector growth

Instead of sourcing, evaluating, and onboarding multiple vendors separately, entrepreneurs can now access pre-vetted service providers through one integrated platform.

The aim is to remove friction from early-stage business setup, where fragmented service procurement often leads to delays, duplicated onboarding processes, and rising administrative costs before a company becomes fully operational.

By consolidating these processes, SME in a Box is designed to help businesses move more quickly from registration to revenue generation.

Cost savings and operational efficiency for SMEs

According to DET, the platform’s partner offerings are expected to unlock more than Dhs80,000 in potential value per business, depending on the services selected and the operational needs of each SME.

These savings are delivered through discounted transaction rates, waived fees, subsidised onboarding, reduced service charges, and preferential SME packages offered by participating partners.

Emirati SME members are also eligible for additional preferential pricing and enhanced onboarding support, aimed at encouraging local entrepreneurship and business ownership.

Beyond direct financial benefits, the platform is also expected to deliver substantial time savings. Entrepreneurs who activate banking and payment solutions through SME in a Box can save up to 200 hours typically spent researching providers, negotiating contracts, and completing multiple onboarding processes.

Faster onboarding through integrated digital services

SME in a Box launches with 18 private-sector partners, each offering tailored SME packages and streamlined onboarding processes.

Certain digital-first services, including payments, logistics, and telecommunications, can be activated in as little as 24 hours through automated eligibility checks and integrated onboarding systems.

More complex services, such as corporate banking and licensing approvals, will continue to follow standard regulatory procedures. However, even in these areas, the platform is designed to reduce delays by enabling coordinated onboarding, pre-validation of documents, and improved communication between service providers.

DET highlights shift toward coordinated SME ecosystem

Ahmad Al Room Almheiri, CEO of the Mohammed Bin Rashid Establishment for Small and Medium Enterprises Development (Dubai SME), part of DET, said the platform reflects a shift in how Dubai supports entrepreneurs.

“Small and medium enterprises are the backbone of Dubai’s economy. Through direct consultation with founders, we understood that what they need most today is clarity, speed, and cost efficiency. SME in a Box is designed as a working product that removes friction from the system: fewer steps, fewer delays, and clearer costs from the outset. Founders can see what they are getting, how long it will take, and what it will cost before they begin. This product reflects a broader shift in how we support SMEs: from offering individual services to delivering a coordinated operating environment. It is built in partnership with the private sector, aligned with real business needs, structured to save costs, reduce time to market and increase certainty for founders. In a rapidly evolving global landscape, our priority remains unchanged: to ensure Dubai is the most dependable, efficient, and enabling place to start and grow a business. SME in a Box is a practical step towards that goal, and we will continue to expand and refine it in line with the ambitions of the Dubai Economic Agenda, D33.”

Alignment with Dubai’s long-term economic vision

The initiative builds on Dubai’s wider efforts to improve ease of doing business, strengthen economic resilience, and support sustainable growth under the Dubai Economic Agenda, D33, which aims to double the size of the emirate’s economy.

DET said SME in a Box is aligned with its ongoing strategy to enhance business friendliness, support SMEs at all stages of growth, from micro enterprises to scaling companies, and reinforce Dubai’s global competitiveness as a destination for entrepreneurship.

The platform launches with 18 private-sector partners, including Emirates NBD, Network International, Commercial Bank of Dubai, du, Crossval, Paymob, Ziina, Qashio, Bayzat, Mamo, Aramex, Tabby, Arab Financial Services AFS, Revent, Ascentia, DHL, Maison, and Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank.

Together, these organisations form a coordinated ecosystem intended to simplify how SMEs establish and operate in Dubai, offering integrated access to financial services, logistics, telecommunications, payments, and business management tools.

Phased rollout and future integration plans

The rollout of SME in a Box will take place in phases, beginning with core business enablement services such as licensing support, banking, payment processing, telecommunications, logistics, and marketing.

Future phases will introduce deeper digital integration, increased automation, and expanded onboarding capabilities.

Over time, the platform is expected to integrate with the Invest in Dubai platform, creating a unified digital gateway for business setup and operations.

SME in a Box will also be integrated into Dubai Founders HQ, connecting founders, investors, corporates, and ecosystem partners under the D33 framework.

This integration is intended to support businesses as they transition from setup to scale, providing access to mentorship, investment opportunities, growth programmes, market access initiatives, and strategic partnerships through a single connected ecosystem.

DET and its partners plan to continue expanding the platform’s capabilities over time, incorporating advanced analytics and automation tools to monitor adoption, optimise service delivery, and measure broader economic impact.

Entrepreneurs, startups, Dubai SME members and Dubai-based businesses are invited to explore SME in a Box and activate their services here.

Dubai-based artificial intelligence (AI) company Polynome has launched an agentic AI platform designed to provide organisations with real-time intelligence and autonomous responses across physical environments, targeting sectors including government services, hospitality, retail, banking and telecommunications.

The platform, which is now generally available, combines vision-language models (VLMs), a bilingual voice assistant and an agentic reasoning layer designed to transform data captured by cameras and sensors into operational actions.

Polynome said the platform is being deployed across government services, hospitality and retail, and is designed to help organisations make use of existing camera infrastructure without requiring model retraining or data labelling.

The company said enterprises have historically relied on conventional computer vision systems that require separate models for different use cases, creating fragmented systems that generate alerts but limited operational outcomes.

Polynome’s platform is delivered through two flagship applications.

Its Digital Floor Manager serves as a live operational layer built around existing camera infrastructure, monitoring passengers, customers and vehicles in real time. The system measures touchpoints against operational service-level agreements (SLAs) and can identify service-quality gaps, queue build ups, safety incidents, compliance breaches and dispatch requirements. The deployment also generates a real-time digital twin of the monitored environment.

AI Concierge

The company’s AI Concierge is a bilingual voice agent designed to replace legacy interactive voice response (IVR) and call-centre workflows. The Arabic-first model supports regional dialects and code-switching between Arabic and English and is integrated with customer backend systems to complete tasks such as balance enquiries, billing, top-ups, licence renewals, bookings, status updates, complaints and fraud alerts.

Polynome said its platform is built on an architecture that combines in-house vision-language models with object tracking technology. Operators can describe requirements in plain English or Arabic, enabling the system to configure itself without retraining.

The company said its voice assistant processes audio as a continuous stream rather than discrete user turns, allowing it to manage overlapping speech, pauses and language switching. End-to-end response time is 2.2 seconds.

The platform is designed to run on edge hardware located within customer facilities, processing live video without cloud connectivity.

Polynome said the system is fully on-premise, with no cloud dependency, third-party model API or telemetry leaving the facility, making it suitable for regulated industries where data residency and security requirements are critical.

Using cameras

“Every airport, mall, and warehouse already has thousands of cameras. The problem was never the hardware. It was that those cameras couldn’t think. With VLMs, you describe what matters in plain language, and the system sees it. With an agentic layer, the system acts on what it sees. That is the platform we are putting into production today,” said Alexander Khanin, CEO and co-founder of Polynome.

The company said the platform is being used in government and transport applications to replace legacy IVR systems handling millions of citizen interactions, while in hospitality it monitors premium lounges and traveller touchpoints against service-level targets.

In retail, the platform is used for footfall measurement, dwell time analysis, conversion tracking and queue management, while also supporting in-store voice assistance.

Banking and telecommunications customers are using the system for branch queue management, anti-money laundering (AML) acceleration, compliance monitoring and customer service applications.

Polynome describes itself as an agentic AI company focused on the physical world, with a platform designed to turn cameras, microphones and sensors into systems that can perceive, understand and act in real time.

The company’s research team includes co-authors of the DETR (end-to-end object detection with transformers) paper and contributors to research presented at conferences including CVPR, ICML, NeurIPS, ECCV, ICRA and IROS.

Polynome also operates the Polynome AI Academy, an enterprise education programme focused on physical-operations AI, and machines can see (MCS), an annual conference focused on computer vision, robotics and agentic AI.