It’s about half past 9:00 A.M at Hub71, a technology Park in Abu Dhabi. A young 22-year-old founder, Amara, has her laptop skillfully balanced on the corner of a small coffee table, going over her pitch again.
The slides on her screen describe a platform she built to solve logistics challenges across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Her voice carries both determination and anticipation. Around her, conversations in Arabic, Hindi, and English overlap in the co-working space. Apart from Amara being two coffees deep in concentration, there are engineers at other tables refining code, investors swapping notes, and a few mentors offering last-minute advice to enthusiastic youngsters.
Scenes like this have become increasingly common across the Gulf in the last five years. What was once a constellation of technology initiatives back in the day is now a growing galaxy, where governments, venture capital, and homegrown innovation all come together. And in 2025, the Gulf’s technology story isn’t about catching up with global brands; it’s a story about how these brands are shaping them for a better world today and tomorrow.
Where Bold Decisions Begin to Germinate
The numbers speak for themselves. According to the Times of India, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) registered over 5,600 startups in just one quarter of 2024, marking the highest number yet in the GCC. This underscores the country’s growing startup momentum as a magnet for talent and capital. Similarly, its next-door neighbour, Saudi Arabia, has equally visible ambitions, with its Vision 2030 agenda placing technology at the heart of economic diversification.
As reported by Al Arabiya and the Saudi Press Agency, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced the launch of Humain on May 12th, 2025. Humain is a Public Investment Fund-backed AI company with partnerships spanning Nvidia, AMD, and a few others. The Arab News and other industry outlets note that July 2025 saw a $10 billion investment, Humain Ventures, to support large-scale AI infrastructure globally: data processing hubs and national language models. This isn’t a strategically planned economic move by the Kingdom or Humain. It’s just a statement of pure intent: the Gulf aspires to be an originator, not an importer, of deep tech capability.
Meanwhile, regional hubs like AstroLabs in Riyadh and Dubai continue to open their doors for emerging leaders and new business founders from all around the world. They come to the Gulf offering workspaces, licenses, and access to transnational networks that were once more or less impossible to navigate.
Startups that Redesign the Game
For all the headline-grabbing megaprojects, the real heartbeat of the Gulf’s technology sector transformation lies in its startups. The kind of companies that are lean, fast-moving, and solving problems that matter locally and regionally. Some of them are as follows:
- Lean Technologies in Riyadh is powering up the fintech ecosystem by giving businesses a secure API access to banking data, which in turn enables products that were implausible not five years ago. This organization has raised a notable $33 million, drawing attention from international investors.
- Sary in Saudi Arabia is yet another company transforming B2B supply chains. They connect small retailers to wholesalers from a single app, downloadable on phones, streamlining trade in a region where inconsistent supply was once a major bottleneck. After receiving $75 million in funding, Sary is scaling into new markets like the UAE and Egypt.
- Alaan is yet another startup based in the UAE, which is now one of the region’s most closely watched fintech plays. Its corporate spend management platform recently drew in $48 million in a Series A funding, one of the largest pre-seed funding rounds in MENA this year.
- Humain in the KSA stands apart as a state-level startup, carrying the ambition of building AI capability that’s entirely homegrown and under national control. Designed, developed, and governed within the Gulf, the company aims to serve both the economic and geopolitical influence.
Each of these stories, and many more, shares a common thread. They address local challenges while simultaneously thinking beyond the borders, blending the Gulf’s commercial trends with a deep understanding of its cultural and actual logistics.
Ecosystems Built for Ambitious Dreams
A major reason for this momentum today lies in the purposeful construction of various supportive ecosystems in the Gulf. Governments are no longer passive onlookers; they’re active architects, joining hands to create a better world.
In the UAE, the National AI Strategy seeks to integrate artificial intelligence into every important sector by 2031, from healthcare to transportation. According to Arab News, Saudi Arabia plans to grow its technology sector’s contribution to GDP from 1% in 2025 to 5% by 2030. Additionally, Asaraq Al-Awsat reports that the country’s digital economy already stood at 495 billion riyals in 2024, accounting for 15% of GDP. Meanwhile, Qatar, Oman, and Bahrain are also investing in cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, and testing environments to attract niche-specific tech firms.
But beyond policy, the physical and virtual platforms are very important. AstroLabs offers global entrepreneurs an anchor in the Gulf through sector-specific angel investors, streamlined company formation, and partnerships with corporates like SABIC to drive sustainability tech. In Abu Dhabi, Hub71 connects startups with global venture networks and runs incentive programs that can cover workspaces, housing, and health insurance for incipient teams. For an aspiring founder, the difference is simply night and day compared to a year ago. What once took years in just paperwork and informal networking can now happen in months, given that there’s support coming from formal infrastructure.
Challenges, Rules, and the Road Ahead
Yet, for all the promise, the Gulf’s tech journey is not all smooth sailing. For starters, talent remains a barrier specifically in fields like cybersecurity and AI research, where global competition for skilled professionals is vicious. Many startups today still rely on importing expertise, which can impede local knowledge transfer.
Regulation is yet another balancing act. The Gulf’s generally relaxed supervision of emerging tech enables rapid innovation, but in turn leaves unanswered questions about ethics, privacy, and enforcement. For artificial intelligence, chiefly, the absence of uniform regional standards in the Gulf may create fractured adoption paths.
Despite benefiting from modern tools, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) continue facing cybersecurity weaknesses and digital divide. And in an era of rapid growth, these loopholes could become vulnerabilities.
Sights Set on Digital Revolution
Back at Hub71, our founder, Amara, stands before an investor panel. Her voice steady, and her pitch sharp and data-centric. As she clicks to the final slide, there’s a strong sense in the room that this is more than just another funding ask. Rather, it’s a microcosm of the Gulf’s larger scope: vision meeting execution, capital meeting capability, and local insight meeting global ambition.
The Gulf’s technology story in 2025 is still being written, but the plot is quite clear to all now. It’s about building companies, ecosystems, profits, capabilities, following global trends, and setting them. And as more sparks light up across the desert, the horizon ahead is promising and powered.
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