ABU DHABI

Amal Al Jabri has been confirmed as CEO of Cognit, the joint Mubadala/IBM project created to be the exclusive Middle East provider of IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

Al Jabri has been acting general manager of Cognit since June 2016, during which time she has overseen the growth of the firm. During her tenure, IBM Watson Arabic, a version of Watson with Arabic cognitive learning abilities, had its first live installation.

Khaled Abdullah Al Qubaisi, Chief Executive Officer, Aerospace, Renewables and ICT at Mubadala, said, “Amal has been pivotal to Mubadala’s activities in the sector for over a decade, and has rapidly developed into a clear leader in the technology space. Cognit is one of the most exciting and ambitious investments for Mubadala, and Amal is the ideal candidate to lead this company as it brings to market IBM Watson’s transformative solutions.”

Al Jabri will leave her role as Deputy CEO of Injazat Data Systems, a regional market leader for secure data centre and managed services solutions, to focus on her new role. Khaled Al Melhi remains as CEO of Injazat, following his appointment earlier this year.

Watson uses natural language processing and machine learning to reveal insights from large amounts of unstructured data.