Happy Tuesday, and welcome to EnterpriseAM AI + Innovation! There are 11 days left before Halloween. Why not dip into the 1970s, arguably the best decade for horror movies — and for movies generally. Start with Richard Donner’s Omen, Brian DePalma’s Sisters and, of course, Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby.
BEFORE WE GET STARTED: Saudi Arabia has pulled the plug on theFuture Investment Initiative as Houthi attacks on the Kingdom continue. Riyadh’s flagship investment conference was scheduled to feature a heavy AI-investment track. Organizers said in a statement they would “soon” announce 2027 dates.
Now, let’s get going.
One big, big number: AI could deliver USD 1 tn in value for the MENA region between today and 2030. That’s the big — huge, really — number out of a pair of recent reports on the region from the World Economic Forum. The reports paint a best-case picture in which the region exits this decade not only far richer but also more efficient, more productive, and more resilient in the face of climate change and other big challenges, all because of AI.
With a lot of caveats: But that rosy picture and gargantuan USD figure come with many, many caveats about what MENA nations must do to turn their AI potential into reality.
Plus there’s the broader, perennial question: Whether government and industry leaders in the US and elsewhere will put enough safeguards on AI development so that it’s a source of profit and advancement rather than destabilization.
Here’s how IMF Chief Kristalina Georgieva put it: “If there are no safeguards, then the risks may exceed the opportunities. And above all, we do need an ethical foundation, and I’m not sure we are there as a society,” she said Friday at the institution’s joint annual meeting with the World Bank in Bangkok. Here’s more from Reuters.
The WEF reports underscore the precarious position of both government and industry leaders in MENA — and the rest of the globe, for that matter — as they move to embrace AI. There’s a huge upside if everything goes right, but also big downsides if any number of things go wrong, many of which are out of their control.
Breaking it down: Here’s how that potential USD 1 tn breaks down per the first WEF report on resilient AI growth: “Up to USD 200 bn in sustainable financing through the financial sector, USD 370 bn in sustainable investment flows enabled by the public sector, USD 250 bn in long-term asset losses avoided and USD 90 bn in increased valuation through improved sustainability performance for the energy sector, alongside USD 100 bn in sustainable projects launched via cross-sector partnerships.”
Methodology: WEF arrived at the figure by organizing a series of AI “sprints” with regional partners aimed at testing the potential value of AI in different sectors. The global management and consulting firm Bain helped manage the sprints. Regional partners included First Abu Dhabi Bank, the UAE state oil company ADNOC, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Economy and Planning, and Bahrain’s Ministry of Sustainable Development.
Notice a trend? Eagle-eyed observers will note that’s an entirely GCC list, raising questions about how broadly the USD 1 tn in potential benefits will be shared. The report does not break down the potential benefits by country.
Best practices: The report does make a series of recommendations for how the region can wring the most value from AI, including:
Building sustainability into AI systems from the start
Experimenting broadly with AI, then quickly prioritizing the highest value use cases
Using AI to reimagine how work is done rather than making incremental improvements.
Thesecond WEF reportfocuses on how to sustainably build the region’s massive projected AI data center footprint, including making significant upgrades to the region’s electricity infrastructure and leaning on AI to reduce data centers’ water use and cooling costs.
Now, let’s get to today’s Lede, which looks at Egypt’s efforts to be a bigger player in that very same data center game. –Joe
Egypt wants to become an exporter of computing power, and regional conflicts might be creating a golden opportunity. Tech executives and government officials in the country are actively courting investors, and the Sisi administration plans to finalize its first national data center strategy before the end of 2026, government officials tell EnterpriseAM.
Egypt doesn’t have the deep pockets or massive energy supply of the UAE and Saudi Arabia, which are investing tens of USD bns in becoming AI computing hubs.
But it has other advantages: Plenty of land to build data centers on, undersea cables that connect to North and Sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and Asia, and a growing pool of tech talent. The number of trainees in technology fields rose from 4k in the government fiscal year ending in June 2019 to 500k in the year ending June 2025, then-Communications Minister Amr Talaat said in December.
The kicker: And Egypt’s not living under the constant threat of Iranian drone strikes, which are sparking investor anxiety (but no backing out — yet) when it comes to the major AI buildouts in the Gulf. Political violence insurance premiums for Gulf coverage have jumped anywhere from around 600% to almost 10k%, Omar Gemei (LinkedIn), a top executive in Marsh’s Dubai office, tells EnterpriseAM.
The upshot: Combine those elements with a massive and growing global hunger for AI computing power and Egypt may have a shot to transform from a minor player into a significant regional power.
“AI is where the value add for Egypt is,” Hossam Heiba, managing director of Orbis Capital and former head of General Authority for Investment (GAFI), the state investment promotion and regulation agency, tells EnterpriseAM. Pairing data centers with local AI work “increases revenue, creates job opportunities, and helps Egypt stay part of global technology advancements,” he says.
But it’s a long road from here to there. Egypt has somewhere between 15 and 60 MW of installed data center IT load capacity, depending on the estimate, and only c. 20 MW of new capacity is firmly committed. Companies have unveiled plans that would push capacity to 400-500 MW, but haven’t secured funding for those more ambitious plans yet, as our Egypt desk previously reported.
One big player is Africa Data Centres Egypt, a consortium of Vodafone Business, Elsewedy Electric, and UK-based Cassava Technologies. The group has committed to bringing online 20 MW within three years. It’s the same consortium responsible for the 20 MW of already-committed data center capacity (above) and it ultimately hopes to scale to 200 MW of total capacity, with a total investment of up to USD 1 bn.
Other announced plans include:
A USD 2.1 bn project by Gulf Data Hub and Elsewedy Data Centers, first announced under a 2023 MoU, for up to 192 MW.
A planned 25 MW facility in Maadi built by Khazna, the data center arm of UAE AI champion G42, with local partner Benya Group. Here are details from EnterpriseAM Egypt.
Orange Egypt is also talking with local partners about building AI data center capacity, Hazem Gebili, the company’s chief AI and digital officer, tells EnterpriseAM. He declined to provide details of the prospective deals. “Hopefully you’ll hear good news soon,” he says.
Security is one big selling point. Egypt has been almost totally spared from the Iranian drone and missile strikes that have pummeled Gulf nations and their data infrastructure off-and-on since the war began — likely making it a more attractive place to build data centers, which are highly vulnerable to physical attack. The one exception was a July drone strike that hit gas storage vessels at Damietta Port, which Iran has not officially claimed responsibility for.
The (potential) caveat: Cairo has, so far, avoided direct involvement in the war except as a mediator urging de-escalation, but may soon send troops to help Saudi Arabia defend itself against Houthi attacks. The House of Representatives ended a second closed-door session on Monday without a decision on authorizing military support for the kingdom if Riyadh requests it. Debate will resume on Monday, 26 October.
Background: Iranian drones hit two Amazon Web Services data centers in the UAE and one in Bahrain during the early weeks of the war, causing structural damage, power outages and fires. Amazon has been unable to restore access to cloud services in Bahrain and parts of the UAE since then, the company acknowledged in September. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps has explicitly warned that AI infrastructure linked to US companies is a legitimate war target.
To be clear: This doesn’t mean that Egyptian data centers might not become an Iranian target or a target in some future regional conflict — but being relatively more protected against Iranian attacks is a big selling point for global investors right now. Data center operators in the Gulf and Ukraine have focused on making their infrastructure more resilient against attacks by burying sensitive data underground and putting up drone-catching nets. The UAE’s G42 is also mulling spreading its planned 5 GW Stargate UAE campus out over multiple locations rather than concentrating it into a single 26 sq km campus in Abu Dhabi.
Not just AI: Egypt has also become a hedge for UAE oil and gas companies with export routes constrained by the Strait of Hormuz closure, as our EnterpriseAM UAE colleagues reported yesterday. Other logistics providers are also more interested in Egypt than they were before the outbreak of the war early this year as “redundancy” becomes the watchword.
Location is another selling point. Egypt offers “low-latency access to Europe and Asia,” according to the US Commerce Department’s International Trade Administration. And its undersea cables give it fast connections to Africa too, where data centers are still scarce, Justin Alexander (LinkedIn), director of Khalij Economics, tells EnterpriseAM.
A Gulf backup? One possibility Egyptian firms are looking at is providing backup services for Gulf data centers so they can ensure customers stay online and don’t risk losing data in the event of a physical attack or natural disaster. That’s technically possible, but would require some negotiating to ensure Egypt can provide all the legal protections for customer data that Gulf companies want.
A safe haven: “When I am at risk, it’s natural for me to think quickly and search for a safe haven that is nearby and that I can rely on,” Heiba says. Saudi AI champion Humain declined to comment for this story. G42 did not reply to a request for comment.
Gulf companies already have a foothold. More than 35 of them, including 16 Emirati firms, run formal outsourcing and AI operations in Egypt, a government source tells EnterpriseAM. Significantly more run smaller operations across the country.
Spillover demand from Europe: Egypt is also well situated to provide computing services to Europe, which has struggled to build enough data center capacity to meet demand — mostly because of long delays building the necessary infrastructure to connect to the continent’s outdated electrical grids.
Egypt can connect data centers to its grid far faster, but also has its own energy challenges. The country relies on natural gas for about 80% of its power generation, which it increasingly has to import, making its energy supply more vulnerable to supply shocks. When the Iran war began, for instance, Israel halted its gas supply to Egypt and global energy prices spiked. Pipeline gas imports plunged 78% month-on-month in March, and natural gas made up 45% of Egypt’s fuel import bill in the first quarter, at USD 2.5 bn, our colleagues at EnterpriseAM Egypt reported.
BUT: Egypt has in recent years proven it can build world-scale renewable energy infrastructure quickly and it’s building a deep feeder industry. Just yesterday, the EBRD said it had arranged USD 265 mn in financing for a 1.2 GW solar facility in Minya being built by Infinity Power and HAU Energy. It will be the biggest solar plant in Africa when it comes online.
Even if Egyptian electricity comes at a higher price, “companies will be willing to pay that price because electricity is now scarce around the world for data centers,” Dina Kamel (LinkedIn), a partner at law firm Zaki Hashem whose focus areas include telecommunications, media, technology, and data protection, tells EnterpriseAM.
Finally, there’s sure to be plenty of demand at home, too. Egypt has more than 109 mn people, and the Electricity Ministry expects the telecom industry to need c. 1 GW of power over the next two years, a government source tells EnterpriseAM. “Having a data center in Egypt is a must, because Egypt itself needs to have hosting for its own data,” Heiba says.
But there are also some barriers. Egyptian firms need approval from the US Commerce Department to buy AI chips from Nvidia and other US suppliers and it’s unclear if they’ll get access to the highest-end chips, which the US is providing to the UAE and, in a more limited way, to Saudi Arabia.
Caught in the great power struggle: Huawei has offered to sell more than 1.4k of its newest Ascend 950-series chips for an AI training cloud in Egypt used by government customers. Buying Huawei chips would be bureaucratically easier than buying from Nvidia.
BUT: Washington has warned that using certain Huawei Ascend chips would violate its export controls — teeing up a conflict between Cairo and Washington and reducing the likelihood of cooperating with Gulf AI firms, which rely pretty much exclusively on US chips. (China is also increasing export controls on its AI tools. More on that below in AI in Business.)
TL;DR: There’s a lot still to figure out, but advocates see a big opportunity. “I think we need the right framework and the right pricing,” Kamel says. “But we have the political will and we have the regulatory will as well. So I think it is going to see the light.”
Humain is putting its next Riyadh data center out to bid: The PIF-backed AI infrastructure developer has issued a request for proposals for an engineering, procurement and construction contract to build a 100 MW facility in the capital’s Al-Saad district, with bids due 8 November, Meed reports. Meed puts the contract at c. USD 1 bn.
The build is sized for heavy GPU workloads. The first phase splits into two 50 MW stages designed for high-density GPU clusters, with rack densities of 240-250 kW cooled by direct-to-chip liquid loops. An optional expansion would take the site to 200 MW. Phase one targets service by October 2028, phase two by January 2029.
IN CONTEXT- The tender is one component of a much larger planned buildout: Humain is developing the infrastructure for what it says will be a 6 GW AI campus in Al-Saad, where Al Yamama holds the enabling-works contract.
Is this the start of the AI bubble bursting? Bonds backing some of the largest data centers have fallen well below the value they were issued at, signaling investor fears that big AI projects won’t make money fast enough to repay the USD tns being borrowed to build out AI capacity.
Details as of late last week: Bonds for Meta’s “Hyperion” data center traded above face value in early July. They’re now worth about 91 cents for every USD lent. Bonds for two data centers built by Hut 8, one in Louisiana and one in Texas that Nvidia rents, have fallen to around 93 and 91 cents. Bonds for a Microsoft-leased data center in Georgia, owned by Blackstone’s QTS, are under 87 cents.
It’s worst for the neoclouds, providers of AI-first cloud infrastructure: CoreWeave, the best known of the group, saw its shares drop almost 25% in a week. Rival Nebius dropped 12% on Friday alone. Even Nvidia, which has invested USD bns in neoclouds including CoreWeave and Nebius, lost about USD 270 bn in market value in a week.
The takeaway: “Data center bonds are having their Darwin moment, where the weakest credits struggle to survive,” Allianz CIO Ludovic Subran told the Financial Times. Here’s more from EnterpriseAM UAE.
So, is there a bubble? It’s the question of the year — and it depends on how you define “bubble.” The New York Times’ Ezra Klein has a debate worth listening to (listen or watch, runtime: 1:06:54).
China’s getting into the AI export-control game. Beijing proposed export controls on Friday covering 23 AI technologies, from AI models to the massive computer systems that run them, Reuters reports.
The move comes as the US has put significant controls on which nations can buy its most advanced AI chips and other technology, partly to keep the technology out of Beijing’s hands, so the US can stay ahead in the AI race.
A big exception: The Chinese rules don’t cover people using AI through apps, websites, or online services, China’s commerce ministry says. TL;DR: That could let Chinese AI companies like DeepSeek and Alibaba keep expanding abroad while Beijing keeps a closer eye on its most sensitive tech, Reuters says.
The Gulf angle: One of the companies Beijing has discussed limiting overseas access to is Z.ai, Reuters reported in July — Aramco’s venture arm, Prosperity7, is an investor.
Keeping it out of the wrong hands: Beijing is especially worried about AI being misused to build hacking tools that could attack critical infrastructure, the ministry says. Related: China’s Tencent said on Friday that its AI agents acted in an unintended way while evaluating third-party models, the first acknowledged case of Chinese AI going rogue, per Reuters. Tencent’s statement followed a report by the AI-safety research group Swarmchasers detailing the incident.
Chinese models have been winning fans overseas ever since DeepSeek’s R1 burst onto the scene early last year. They’re often cheaper than US alternatives. Many MENA users also appreciate China’s open-weights models, which are easier to run locally without violating national regulations about keeping regulated data inside the country.
What’s next? The rules aren’t final yet. Beijing is taking feedback until 15 November. But companies already have to register some tech transfers abroad as of Friday, Reuters says.
MEANWHILE, in Taipei: Taiwan plans to make it a crime to ship restricted AI servers and top-end chips to China, partly to match US rules under its trade deal with Washington, Bloomberg reports.
More details are emerging: The OpenAI engineer arrested for allegedly bugging a company meeting room last week says he’s advised Saudi government agencies on tech in the past, The New York Times reports. He’s also listed as a partner at a Riyadh venture firm.
Why that matters: US officials are worried about foreign governments spying on American AI labs. The room Abdulrahman Alfozan allegedly bugged was used for leadership meetings and briefings with government officials, per the Times.
But: He hasn’t been charged with spying or with working as a foreign agent, only with secretly recording conversations. OpenAI says it found no evidence that Alfozan took model weights, source code, or customer data.
Alfozan had booked a one-way ticket to Saudi Arabia for himself and his family before he was arrested on 9 October, prosecutors claim. A judge denied him bail on Monday, Fortune reports.
Washington’s take: Both corporate and state-sponsored espionage are “realities,” and US companies “need to be wary,” Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton told CNBC.
MEANWHILE, in the UAE: Sharjah Police have taken down four international cybercrime gangs that allegedly laundered AED 8.83 bn, Gulf Business reports. Police arrested 33 suspects and said the gangs used AI tools to help with phishing and online fraud.
Eight states vs. OpenAI: At least eight US states are suing OpenAI, saying ChatGPT hurts kids and deceives adults, the Washington Post reports. Rogue agents, too: The states also blame OpenAI for “cyberhacking agents” that hacked other companies. OpenAI says it has built protections for kids into ChatGPT.
Who’s in charge here? Trump’s new AI task force met for the first time last week and agreed to study AI’s risks, Reuters reports. Anthropic, meanwhile, has drafted its own AI safety law and is pitching it to Congress, Politico notes. Under Anthropic’s plan, the government could only stop a new AI model if it threatens a disaster, like killing more than 50 people.
Nvidia’s European tour: Germany signed yesterday a declaration of intent with Nvidia to put more AI on its factory floors, the German government said.
Rogue agents go global: AI models broke into Indian companies’ systems during testing and read confidential records, India’s cyber agency says, per Reuters.
Anthropic’s IPO gets a reality check: Investors now expect Anthropic to be valued at about USD 1.5 tn heading into its expected November listing, down from the c. USD 2 tn they’d been betting on, Reuters reports, citing people it says are familiar with the matter.
Why the dip? Anthropic’s sales are still growing, just more slowly. Revenue rose 45% quarter-on-quarter to USD 16.8 bn in 3Q, after more than doubling during the previous quarter. The Gulf angle: Abu Dhabi’s MGX and Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund are both Anthropic backers, as we noted last week.
Abu Dhabi takes its e-government global: The emirate wants to sell its one-stop government app to the world. It has launched TAMM Global, a private company that will license the AI-powered platform, which bundles 1.2k+ services, to other countries, The National reports. No buyers have been announced yet.
UAE lender Emirates NBD says it’s on track to become the first bank in MENA to deploy OpenAI’s ChatGPT using in-country infrastructure housed entirely in the Emirates, the two said in a statement out late yesterday. The planned rollout could give other banks in our corner of the world a blueprint for using global AI models on sensitive banking data while keeping processing at home as governments across the region tighten data residency and sovereignty requirements.
Lights, camera, algorithm: Dubai-based Popcorn AI Studio, which makes AI tools for producing films and videos in Arabic, has raised USD 1 mn in pre-seed funding, the company said in a press release.
Speaking of popcorn: You should also check out Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (probably the creepiest film Donald Sutherland ever did and that’s saying a lot) and Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man (better than Midsommar, which is pretty much the same film, just 46 years later).
21 October (Wednesday): Meta reports 3Q earnings, with AI infrastructure spend in focus.
26-27 October (Monday-Tuesday): The Dubai AI Festival returns as part of Dubai AI Week.
28 October (Wednesday): Alphabet reports 3Q earnings after the US market closes, with AI capex and Gemini / cloud growth as the headline watch items.
28 October (Wednesday): Microsoft reports fiscal 1Q 2027 earnings after the US market closes, including Azure and OpenAI-partnership capex disclosures.
29 October (Thursday): Amazon reports 3Q earnings, including AWS and Bedrock AI growth.
30 October (Friday): UAE businesses with annual revenue of AED 50 mn or more must have an accredited e-invoicing provider in place by this date.
November 2026
7-10 November (Saturday-Tuesday): Cairo ICT runs in New Cairo alongside AIDC Expo, its dedicated AI, data center, and cloud event.
17-19 November (Tuesday-Thursday): Bengaluru Tech Summit brings businesses, startups, researchers, and policymakers to Bengaluru, India, under the theme “AI & Beyond.”
17-20 November (Tuesday-Friday): Microsoft Ignite runs in San Francisco and online, covering Microsoft’s AI, cloud, security, and data products.
30 November-4 December (Monday-Friday): AWS re:Invent brings Amazon’s cloud and AI conference to Las Vegas, with product announcements and sessions on deployment, costs, and security.
December 2026
1-3 December (Tuesday-Thursday): Black Hat MEA brings cybersecurity leaders, researchers, and technology companies to Malham, Riyadh.
6-12 December (Sunday-Saturday): NeurIPS holds its main AI research conference in Sydney, offering a look at advances that could shape the next generation of commercial AI.
7-11 December (Monday-Friday): GITEX Global opens with a leadership summit at Dubai World Trade Centre on 7 December, followed by its exhibition at Expo City Dubai on 8-11 December.
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