MBZUAI goes all in on open, Carmignac plants its flag in Dubai, and Standard Chartered brings spot crypto trading to the UAE

MBZUAI rolls out its biggest AI model family yet

Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence’s (MBZUAI) Institute of Foundation Models (IFM) launched K2 Horizon, a six-model AI family spanning 0.9 bn to 375 bn parameters, with weights, code, training data, and methodology all released openly, the university said in a statement (pdf). The smallest models are built to run on watches and phones, while the largest targets enterprise reasoning and agentic workloads.

Why it stands out: IFM says K2 Horizon goes beyond the usual “open weights” model by publishing the training data and recipes too. Its three smallest models also set new performance benchmarks in their size classes, while a new distillation technique speeds performance by roughly 3x without degrading response quality. The models are available now via Hugging Face, vLLM and SGLang, with APIs through partners including AWS and Cerebras.

Carmignac plants its flag in Dubai

French asset manager Carmignac opened its first Middle East office in Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC) after securing approval from the Dubai Financial Services Authority to conduct regulated activities, according to a statement. Christophe Younes (LinkedIn) will lead the operation as senior executive officer and head of Middle East, with a mandate to grow distribution across the UAE and wider region. He rejoined Carmignac earlier this year from Pimco after a previous 10-year tenure at the French asset manager.

The Dubai pull: Carmignac is the latest global asset manager to plant a flag in DIFC as the hub keeps drawing in firms despite the regional conflict and gets a boost from policy support aimed at businesses operating there. French peer Varenne Capital Partners also established a DIFC presence recently, following earlier moves by Swiss manager Finreon and India’s ICICI Prudential Asset Management to set up operations in the hub.

Standard Chartered brings spot crypto trading to the UAE

Standard Chartered became the first major lender to offer BTC and ETH spot trading for institutional clients in the UAE, the bank said in a press release. Eligible institutional clients can now buy and sell the crypto assets for immediate delivery through the bank’s FX interfaces, rather than relying on derivatives.

The UAE’s latest crypto pledge: Standard Chartered initially launched the option from its UK branch last July and later rolled out USDC minting and redemption for institutional clients this summer. The move aims to help clients move funds between traditional banking systems and blockchain networks.