Business
Coverage of business and technology shaping industries, economies, and innovation across the Middle East.

Encore
Napster Is Back and It Wants to Digitally Clone Your Teacher
Once the music industry’s biggest headache, Napster’s next act is bringing AI to the classroom.
By Iain Akerman

Artificial Intelligence
One of AI’s Fiercest Critics Says All the Doom Talk Is “Meant to Distract Us”
Timnit Gebru argues that AI companies are stoking fears of extinction to avoid discussing actual harms, like autonomous weapons.
By Lauren Goode

Artificial Intelligence
9 Gemini Prompt Tips for Better Answers
Learn how to write better Google Gemini prompts and get more useful answers from Gems, Canvas, Deep Research and other built-in tools.
By Megan Tomos

How To and Advice
14 Claude Prompting Tips to Get Better Answers
A little bit of engineering gets you the very best answers out of Anthropic’s chatbot.
By Megan Tomos

Artificial Intelligence
Forget Open Weights, the UAE Just Released Six Fully Open AI Models
MBZUAI just launched six AI models with their training data, code and methodology public, betting on transparency against the backdrop of global AI paranoia.
By Carla Sertin

FOMO
Middle East Events 2026: What’s Cancelled, Postponed and Still Happening
From Offlimits to Comic Con, these Middle East events have been cancelled, postponed or confirmed for new dates in 2026.
By Jumana Naim

Big Tech
Silicon Valley Doesn’t Get Why You Hate AI
Technology leaders don’t seem to understand society’s gripes about AI, but boy, are they posting through it.

Artificial Intelligence
AI in the Gulf Has a Drinking Problem
Saudi Arabia and the UAE are spending billions on AI compute – but cooling power-hungry GPUs in 45-degree heat is straining water and energy grids.
By Malak Saleh
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Artificial Intelligence
Why Abu Dhabi Is Taking Its AI Ambitions to Japan
Mubadala’s potential $6.3 billion data center in Akita isn't just about parking capital–it’s the next phase of the UAE’s quest to build a global, non-China AI network.
By Malak Saleh

Big Tech
The Safety Reckoning Inside OpenAI
OpenAI’s rogue agent hack was a watershed moment for AI safety and cybersecurity. It also sparked internal questions about the culture that led to it.
By Maxwell Zeff

Artificial Intelligence
Saudi Arabia Will Be the First Arab Country To Host Unesco’s AI Ethics Forum
The Riyadh forum will bring policymakers, researchers and technology companies together to discuss AI governance, transparency and human rights.
By Dana Alomar

Big Tech
Made by Google 2026: How to Watch in the UAE and What to Expect
The Pixel 11 is expected to lead Google’s launch, which starts at 2am in the UAE and 1am in Saudi Arabia.
By Megan Tomos

Artificial Intelligence
33 AI Terms Every Student Should Know Before Going Back to School
From LLMs and hallucinations to deepfakes and AI agents, this glossary explains the essential language shaping today’s classrooms–and the world beyond them.
By Ritsuko Kawai

THE ESCAPE ISSUE
How Escaping Overstimulation Became Big Business
Overstimulation made ambient YouTube a digital refuge. Now AI is industrialising the internet's favourite form of escape.
By Megan Tomos
Environment
As Europe Overheats, Gulf Travellers Are Going Further To Escape Summer
For decades, Europe was the Gulf's summer refuge. Now record-breaking heatwaves are forcing travellers to rethink where they go to cool off.
By Rand Al-Hadethi