UAE accelerates AI investment as technology reshapes global finance

The UAE is looking to build and scale AI companies across key sectors, with finance emerging as a major area of opportunity as the technology reshapes how capital is deployed, investment decisions are made and banks operate. At Ai Everything Abu Dhabi 2026, the world’s largest AI-first Expo and Summit, taking place from 6–7 October at ADNEC Centre, the UAE Ministry of Investment will join global investors, financial institutions and fintech companies exploring the next phase of AI-driven finance.

The scale of this opportunity is already visible in Abu Dhabi’s financial ecosystem. Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) is investing more than Dh400 million through 2029 to expand its AI capabilities, strengthen digital infrastructure and modernise regulatory and operational systems, while its asset management ecosystem has grown to 190 fund and asset managers overseeing 276 funds.

Participating at Ai Everything Abu Dhabi, the UAE Ministry of Investment will highlight how it is working towards translatingthe country’s AI investment momentum into companies, capabilities, high-value jobs and long-term economic growth.

“The ambition is not simply to attract investment, but to build and scale more AI companies in the UAE, scale AI applications across sectors, deepen local capabilities, create high-value jobs and strengthen the country’s position as a global centre for AI,”said H.E. Mohamed Hassan Alsuwaidi, Minister, UAE Ministry of Investment.

Central to that strategy is Domestic Direct Investment (DDI) alongside FDI. The Minister highlighted that the UAE’s DDI is estimated at US$100 billion to US$119 billion – approximately 2 to 2.5 times annual FDI inflows – with sovereign funds, family offices and private enterprises investing alongside international capital.

“What sets the UAE apart is not any one incentive, but the way its advantages come together,” H.E. Alsuwaidi added. “These include long-term government ambition, access to decision-makers, a forward-looking regulatory environment, world-class infrastructure and the ability to attract and retain the right talent.”.

Genesis AI, an AI-powered investment advisory company based in Cairo and Dubai, will officially unveil the ‘Financial Idea the show. The platform coordinates more than 15 specialised AI agents across valuation, portfolio risk, market sentiment, trading signals, fundamental and technical analysis, and Shariah compliance.

“We believe the future belongs to orchestrated multi-agent AI systems, where specialist agents work simultaneously, and a master intelligence layer produces one trusted recommendation,” said Yousef Eldosoky, Product Manager, Genesis AI. “This approach improves governance, compliance, speed, and decision quality.”

Meanwhile, exhibitor FairValuation.com is showcasing how itturns financial data into board-ready decisions in minutes. From entity and Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) valuations to listed-company analysis, AI-built financial models and professional presentations, every output is designed to be credible, traceable, auditable and ready for scrutiny.

For financial institutions, scaling AI requires infrastructure that can run it securely alongside critical banking systems. Red Hat, the world's leading provider of enterprise open source solutions, will showcase Red Hat AI on an open hybrid cloud with sovereign AI capabilities.

“The organisations that will pull ahead are the ones that put AI into how they already work,” said Adrian Pickering, General Manager, Middle East and North Africa, Red Hat. “I expect more agentic systems in the flow of day-to-day work. That only holds if local teams can see what the system is doing and supervise it.”

UAE-based exhibitor FedTuna, a federated-learning platform,enables financial institutions to train shared machine-learning models while keeping sensitive records within each organisation.

In a two-bank pilot, FedTuna says its technology increased early fraud capture by 2.0 to 3.7 percentage points at a 1% false-positive rate, equivalent to around 43 additional fraud cases detected per test period.

“A fraud pattern that is new to your bank may already be familiar to another,” said Artem Gerasimov, Founder and CEO of FedTuna. “We are building FedTuna to turn that shared experience into measurable improvements in each bank’s existing fraud detection. Customer records stay inside the bank, and its team stays in control. We measure success by the additional fraud detected at an agreed false-alarm level.”

Abu Dhabi-headquartered SouqView, an AI-powered, gamified investing app, will preview SouqView V2 at the show, demonstrating how AI can help first-time investors build financial knowledge before putting their own capital at risk.

Since launching in March 2026, the app has attracted more than 400 registered users and offers simulated portfolios using live market data across more than 10,000 UAE and US stocks. Around 70 per cent of users are currently profitable in their simulated portfolios, according to the company. SouqView also won the Fintech Sector award at the Sheikh Khalifa Excellence Award in July 2026 and secured a six-figure Khalifa Fund grant.

"Our goal is to make SouqView the first step every investor in the UAE takes," said Mohammed Al Nasri, Founder and CEO of SouqView. "We want people to play, learn, and build real confidence, so when they invest their own money, they already know what they're doing."

Organised by inD, with the Department of Government Enablement as Host Partner and Solutions+, a Mubadala company, as Global Partner, Ai Everything Abu Dhabi brings together institutions and technology leaders shaping the next era of AI, including Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC), G42, AWS, Alibaba Cloud, Mistral AI and Dell Technologies, among others.

The two-day event will articulate ‘The New Intelligence Order from Abu Dhabi, the AI Capital of the World’, convening 400-plus AI big tech companies and start-ups, 50-plus government entities, 20-plus unicorns (the year's largest gathering of AI unicorns), 200-plus investors managing US$100 billion in AUM and 180-plus international speakers.