Jadd Elliot Dib, Founder & CEO of PangaeaX, says global on‑demand data talent is reshaping how organizations work. Instead of growing headcount, he argues the future lies in modular, capability‑based teams that assemble around outcomes and adapt as priorities shift.
In today’s data-driven world, businesses are increasingly recognizing the importance of data for organizational success. However, a paradox has emerged: companies have more data than ever, but they have less clarity on how to configure their workforce to make the most of their data. The reality is that the future of work is not about hiring more people, but about accessing the right capabilities at the right moment. This is less like staffing a factory and more like assembling a mission team: the right people, for the right outcomes, at the right time.

Running a global data workforce platform gives a front-row seat to how the “old rules” are breaking down. The largest change isn’t about remote work or new titles. It’s about how demand for expertise is changing at a pace faster than traditional hiring or workforce planning can reasonably keep up.

Why companies need flexible, project-based teams
In the data world, needs shift constantly. A company might spend months building a new data pipeline, then suddenly face an urgent governance challenge. Or it may be experimenting with machine learning, only to discover that model deployment and monitoring require a completely different skill set than model training. The demand curve is not linear but instead has valleys and troughs.

Despite that, many organizations still try to solve that variability with a permanent headcount. The results are predictable: either teams are overextended and under-resourced, or they’re overstaffed for a season and underutilized in the next. In both cases, resources are not used optimally and business momentum suffers.

Project-based teams are a better match for the reality of modern work because they align talent with outcomes, not org charts. When teams are formed around a defined objective (e.g. data quality improvement, forecasting, customer segmentation, AI readiness), they become more responsive to business priorities, not locked into a fixed set of responsibilities.

This isn’t about replacing full-time employees. It’s about acknowledging that much of the highest-value work today is episodic, specialized, and time-bound. And companies need workforce models that reflect that. 

How modular talent models improve speed and resilience
The most effective organizations aren’t merely “flexible.” They are modular. A modular talent model treats expertise like building blocks. You assemble what you need, when you need it, and redesign the system as new needs emerge. This is especially powerful in data, where a single initiative may require a data engineer, a cloud architect, an analytics translator, a visualization specialist, and a domain expert. These roles can last for weeks or months, but rarely forever. The focus should shift from headcount to capability on demand.

Modularity does two things exceptionally well: It increases speed and creates resilience. Traditional hiring is slow, even when leaders are moving fast. By the time a role is approved, scoped, posted, interviewed, negotiated, and onboarded, the business need may have changed. Modular teams shorten the time needed to reconfigure teams.

Regarding resilience, it used to mean having backup systems. Now, it also means having backup expertise. When talent is modular, companies can adapt when priorities shift, budgets tighten, or new technologies emerge. Modular workforce models reduce bottlenecks and distribute capability across a broader, more dynamic network.

What leaders must unlearn about workforce planning
To adopt this new reality, leaders will need to unlearn a few deeply embedded assumptions. These are:

1. Control comes from keeping everything in-house
Many leaders believe control equals ownership: if the people are employees, the work is safer, higher quality, and easier to manage. But control actually comes from clear outcomes, strong governance, good process, and transparency. The best blended teams outperform traditional teams because they’re designed around accountability and results, not employment type.

2. Planning means predicting
Workforce planning has historically been an exercise in prediction: forecasting roles and headcount needs 12–18 months out. But prediction fails when the environment changes monthly. The future belongs to planning as a capability: building systems that allow fast reconfiguration, repeatable onboarding, and rapid team formation.

3. Quality requires permanence
Quality requires standards, not permanence. If the system is designed for excellence, great work will come from full-time employees, independent specialists, or blended teams. That means shared frameworks, rigorous documentation, well-defined deliverables, and strong leadership. The model doesn’t guarantee success. The operating system does.

The changing relationship between people and work
Today, we are seeing shifts from job structures to capability systems, from headcount to impact, and from static planning to dynamic orchestration. These aren’t only happening because companies want them. There is also demand from the talent side. Many skilled professionals increasingly prioritize autonomy, meaningful projects, and continuous learning over traditional career ladders. They want the ability to work across industries, solve hard problems, and build a portfolio of impact instead of a flashy job title.

Building access to opportunity in a way that’s transparent and outcome-driven will unlock a more meritocratic market. The best person for the job can be anywhere in the world. And, by reliably connecting that person to the problem, everyone wins –  organizations move faster, and experts can work on what they do best.

Leaders who embrace this won’t just adapt to the nature of work. They’ll shape it.

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Plus VC today announced that its founder and managing partner, Hasan Haider has been recognized with a Top Venture Capitalist Award 2026 at the Forbes Middle East Top Advisors & Investors Summit.

This award recognizes his leadership and proven track record of investing in ambitious entrepreneurs solving real-world challenges and shaping the next generation of category-defining companies as well as his pivotal role in shaping and advancing the venture capital ecosystem across the MENA region, and beyond. Hasan Haider was presented with the award by Khuloud Al Omian, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Middle East, joined by distinguished industry leaders on stage, marking a key moment of recognition within the summit’s program.

Commenting on receiving the Award, Hasan Haider, Founder and Managing Partner at Plus VC, said: “I am deeply honoured to receive this Top Venture Capitalists Award from Forbes Middle East. Being recognized by one of the world’s most prestigious business media brands is a meaningful milestone. This recognition reflects both the extraordinary founders we support and the growing momentum of the MENA venture ecosystem. At Plus VC, our mission is to back ambitious, innovative entrepreneurs building transformative, technology-driven companies from the region for the world. We have backed over 100 startups across diverse sectors, with many emerging as leaders and innovators in their industries.”

Plus VC is an early-stage venture capital firm focused on investing in technology and tech-enabled startups across MENA and its diaspora. The firm partners with ambitious founders to build scalable companies, providing not only capital but also hands-on support, strategic guidance, and access to a strong regional and global network. Plus VC is committed to backing founders shaping the future of innovation across the Middle East and beyond.

The Top Advisors and Investors Awards recognize excellence and impact across the regional investment landscape. The 2026 summit brought together leading venture capitalists, private equity leaders, family offices, institutional investors, and senior banking and economic leaders from across the MENA region.

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Stake today announced it successfully raised $31 million in its oversubscribed Series B funding round led by Emirates NBD, with additional participation from MENA Venture Capital Fund, Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP), Property Finder, STV NICE, Wa’ed Ventures, GFH Partners, and Ellington Properties.

The investment marks a significant milestone in Stake’s evolution as a regulated fintech platform modernising how real estate is accessed, owned, and invested across borders. As global investors increasingly seek transparent, regulated exposure to real assets, Stake is positioning itself as the infrastructure layer connecting capital to high-quality real estate markets worldwide.

With this round, Stake’s total funding to date reaches $58 million, reinforcing its position as one of the fastest-growing fintech companies in the Middle East.

Neeraj Makin, Group Head – Strategy, Analytics and Venture Capital at Emirates NBD, said, “Through our Innovation Fund, we are committed to making such strategic investments and fostering a culture of innovation. We recognise the growing demand for accessible real estate investment opportunities, and Stake’s platform provides a robust, compliant, and scalable solution that we are proud to support.”

“This round is more than capital. It is validation of a mission we have poured our lives into. To have institutions like Emirates NBD, Mubadala, Property Finder, MEVP, Wa’ed Ventures, GFH Partners, STV and Ellington Properties join us is a reminder that our region believes in ambitious ideas and in the power of technology to transform industries. Together, we are building the infrastructure for a new era of real estate ownership, one where borders do not limit opportunity and where every person, regardless of background, can participate in real estate wealth creation. This is just the beginning of what Stake will unlock,” said Rami Tabbara, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Stake.

Saudi Arabia represents Stake’s most immediate and strategic growth market, underpinned by regulatory first-mover advantage and accelerating international capital inflows. In Q4 2024, Stake became the first CMA-regulated investment platform to open the Kingdom’s property market to global investors. Since then, the company has closed three real estate funds in Saudi Arabia, attracting 6,930 international investors and channeling more than SAR 416 million into the local real estate sector, directly supporting the Kingdom’s ambition to expand domestic and foreign investment.

“Saudi Arabia is a strategic growth market for us, and this round allows us to deepen our investment in the Kingdom by expanding our local capabilities and scaling our CMA-regulated offering to meet growing demand from both regional and international investors. We are committed to being a long-term partner to the market, helping channel capital into high-quality opportunities while supporting the Kingdom’s ambition to broaden foreign investment to the masses.” said Manar Mahmassani, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Stake.

Beyond the GCC, Stake is advancing its international strategy to provide investors with diversified exposure across stable and high-growth markets. In October 2025, the company expanded into the U.S. industrial real estate market, one of the most resilient asset classes globally. Early traction has validated Stake’s cross-border investment model, with growing investor demand for exposure to income-generating U.S. assets and clear evidence of the platform’s scalability beyond regional markets.

In parallel, Stake continues to broaden its product offering. In October 2025, the company launched StakeOne, a new investment product designed to digitise access to full property ownership and after-sales asset management. The product expands investor access to premium properties in Dubai, including assets from leading developers such as Emaar, Ellington Properties, Dubai Holding, and more, while introducing streamlined ownership structures and a pathway toward listing ready-to-own properties with full ownership potential

As part of its long-term vision to fully digitise the real estate investment lifecycle, Stake is also advancing regulated tokenisation in collaboration with Property Finder and has already received the In-Principle Approval (IPA) from Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA). The initiative aims to enhance liquidity, transparency, and flexibility in real estate ownership by enabling fractional, tradeable exposure to high-demand assets that were historically accessible only to institutional investors.

Stake continues to deliver strong momentum across its core metrics, recording a GMV CAGR of over 130% and a revenue CAGR of over 100% over the last three years. The platform now serves more than 2 million users from over 211 nationalities across 181 countries, reflecting its growing global reach and investor confidence.

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Saudi Venture Capital Company (SVC) has announced Aian, a pioneering proprietary intelligence platform that further strengthens SVC’s role as a market maker for Saudi Arabia’s private capital ecosystem.

Aian is a custom-built AI market-intelligence capability, developed internally with Saudi national expertise, that transforms SVC’s unmatched private market data and deep institutional knowledge into timely, structured insight on market dynamics, sector evolution, and capital formation. As a cognitive institutional capability, it converts institutional memory into compounding intelligence, ensuring decisions reflect both current market signals and long-term historical insight.

Nora Alsarhan, Deputy CEO and Chief Investment Officer of SVC, said: “As Saudi Arabia’s private capital market scales, clarity, transparency, and data integrity become as critical as capital itself. Aian represents a new layer of national market infrastructure, strengthening institutional confidence, enabling evidence-based decision-making, and supporting sustainable growth. By transforming data into actionable intelligence, Aian reinforces the Kingdom’s position as a leading regional private-capital hub under Vision 2030.”

Alsarhan added, “Market making is not only about deploying capital; it is about shaping the conditions in which capital flows efficiently. The next phase of market development will be driven by intelligence, not just investment. With Aian, we are building the data backbone of Saudi Arabia’s private capital ecosystem, allowing us to see the market with clarity, act with precision, and ensure capital formation is guided by insight, not assumption.”

Athary Almubarak, SVC’s Chief Strategy Officer, said: “In private capital markets, access to capital is rarely the binding constraint. Access to reliable insight is increasingly available. This is particularly true in emerging and fast-scaling markets, where transactions are reported inconsistently, and institutional knowledge is fragmented across organizations and individuals.”

Almubarak continued: “For Development Finance Institutions operating in private capital markets, the lack of clear, consistent data is a structural challenge. It directly affects capital allocation efficiency and the ability to crowd in private investment at scale. SVC was established precisely to address these market frictions. As a government-backed investor with an explicit market-making mandate, our role extends beyond capital deployment to shaping the conditions under which private capital can grow sustainably.”

By integrating SVC’s proprietary portfolio data with selected external market sources, Aian enables continuous consolidation and validation of market activity. The platform produces a living representation of the market that reflects how capital is actually deployed over time, rather than how it may be imperfectly reported at any single moment.

Aian delivers a suite of customizable dashboards that provide more frequent overviews and predictive analytics, enabling SVC to identify priority market gaps, recalibrate capital allocation, design targeted ecosystem interventions, and anchor policy dialogue in evidence rather than anecdote.

The platform features include predictive capabilities that anticipate upcoming funding activity, projecting likely funding rounds and estimated ticket sizes. In addition, Aian incorporates institutional benchmarking tools that enable structured comparisons across peers, markets, and interventions—supporting more precise, evidence-based ecosystem development.

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AI agents are launching at an incredibly rapid pace, with more than one billion agents projected to be built by businesses alone in the next three years. As AI agents begin communicating with one another, a major challenge arises: how can people distinguish legitimate agents from malicious ones and ensure the integrity of agent-to-agent interactions?

To help solve this high-stakes challenge, GoDaddy founded the Agent Name Service (ANS), an open standard that is the internet’s first trust layer for AI agents.

The ANS standard gives developers, companies and everyday internet users a trusted way to verify, discover and register artificial intelligence agents. ANS uses the same core infrastructure that powers today’s internet, domain names, Domain Name Service (DNS), and public key infrastructure (PKI) certificates. It requires each registered AI agent to be assigned a unique, human-readable name and a cryptographically verifiable identity. This lets agents be discovered, verified, and governed across the open web.

To learn more about the ANS Standard, visit agentnameregistry.org.

ANS in practice: GoDaddy ANS Registry
Following the standards outlined by ANS, GoDaddy launched its ANS Registry, which binds an AI agent’s identity to a domain name.  This allows anyone to confirm an AI agent’s domain ownership, and for agents with extended verification, their organizational identity all helping protect people from rogue agents or imposter bots.

All AI agents registered through the GoDaddy ANS Registry earn an ANS-verified badge to help users quickly distinguish vetted agents from potentially malicious ones, aligning with GoDaddy’s broader mission to bring internet-scale trust to the growing agent ecosystem.

GoDaddy ANS Registry builds on the company’s longstanding leadership and experience in helping keep the internet safe with domain names, DNS and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates.

“AI should move the world forward without putting people at risk,” said Travis Muhlestein, GoDaddy product and AI chief technology officer. “ANS makes that possible by providing responsible builders a clear badge of trust and giving every user a quick way to see who—and what—is behind an AI agent.”

Why ANS matters

• Global standards: ANS creates a universal standard for agent identity, enabling seamless interoperability across platforms and ecosystems worldwide. The open design spec for ANS follows the W3C/DID standard and is the only naming service that can be resolved inside any browser without plug-ins.
• Accountability and transparency: Immutable transparency logs create a permanent record of each agent’s registration, renewal and revocation history, creating an audit trail for compliance and trust.
• Discovery and Adoption: A trusted registry makes it easy for users to find, evaluate, and adopt the right agents, accelerating the growth of the AI agent ecosystem.

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Bosta announced its participation in the RiseUp Summit 2026, held at the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo from February 5 to 7, 2026, under the theme “The Turning Point.” During the event, RiseUp announced a strategic partnership with Bosta to support startups by providing innovative logistics solutions that will help them scale and grow.

In this context, Mohamed Ezzat, CEO of Bosta, stated: “Although Egypt is the largest market in the region in terms of size and opportunity, startups need from day one to design their products and business models with scalability across regional and global markets in mind, to ensure real and sustainable growth.”

He added that focusing on building scalable solutions that can adapt to the requirements of different markets has become a critical factor in attracting investment and unlocking new growth opportunities, whether through partnerships or future exit options.

Bosta is one of the leading companies in logistics and delivery solutions in Egypt, offering technology-driven, end-to-end services that support e-commerce businesses by improving the efficiency of shipping and delivery operations, thereby accelerating growth and enabling them to scale within the Egyptian market and across the region.

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Red Sea Global (RSG), the developer behind regenerative tourism destinations The Red Sea and AMAALA, has announced a strategic partnership with Bunat Ventures Limited (Bunat VC) to launch a first-of-its-kind venture fund focused on artificial intelligence (AI)-driven startups in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The AI Venture Fund will invest in early- and growth-stage startups that are either AI-native or leverage AI as a core enabler of their business models. Over the next three years, the Fund aims to support approximately 25 startups through both pre-seed and growth-stage investments. Beyond capital, the Fund will provide investee companies—particularly those based in Saudi Arabia—with access to world-class infrastructure and a state-of-the-art environment to pilot and validate their technologies within RSG’s real-world operations. This partnership is designed to accelerate the development of these startups into national and regional champions in the AI ecosystem.

With a focus on Saudi-based entrepreneurs and Saudi-founded global ventures expanding into the Kingdom, the Fund aims to unlock new pathways for innovation, job creation, and digital excellence. It is expected to act as a catalyst for the local innovation ecosystem, fostering collaboration between investors, academia, and technology partners. It will also attract global talent and promote knowledge exchange to ensure long-term value creation and sustainable growth.

Khaled Zainalabedin, CEO and Managing Partner at Bunat VC, added: “Our collaboration with Red Sea Global brings together visionary development and agile venture capital. Together, we are building a platform to empower the next generation of Saudi AI pioneers who will redefine industries, shape communities, and strengthen Saudi Arabia’s leadership in the global innovation arena.”

RSG welcomed its first guests to The Red Sea in 2023 and now operates 10 resorts, as well as Red Sea International Airport (RSI), which receives regular flights from Riyadh, Jeddah, Dubai, and Doha. This year, Shura Island, the heart of The Red Sea, is opening its first resorts, as well as Shura Links, an 18-hole championship golf course.

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Gruve, a leader in AI services and infrastructure, announced a $50 million follow-on Series A funding to accelerate deployments, expand strategic partnerships, and scale its full-stack agentic services.

The latest round brings Gruve’s total funding to $87.5 million and was led by Xora Innovation (backed by Temasek), with participation from Mayfield, Cisco Investments, Acclimate Ventures, AI Space and other strategic investors.

The capital accelerates Gruve’s ability to make low-latency AI inference capacity immediately available across Tier 1 and Tier 2 U.S. cities and scale efficiently as demand grows, without multi-year data center buildouts.

The Execution Gap in AI
As inference becomes the dominant AI workload, infrastructure has emerged as the industry’s primary constraint. While models, agents, and hardware continue to see breakthroughs, the systems running them have not kept pace.

Most production inference today relies on infrastructure that was never designed for low-latency, high-throughput, cost-sensitive AI, resulting in unsustainable costs, mounting technical debt, and weak unit economics.

Gruve’s Inference Infrastructure Fabric was built to close this gap.

Inference Infrastructure Services Purpose-built for Production AI Workloads
Gruve’s Inference Infrastructure Fabric is a distributed platform engineered specifically for production-grade AI inference, delivering predictable latency, scalable throughput and industry leading economics.

Key capabilities include:

• 500MW+ of expandable U.S. capacity, leveraging excess power and existing infrastructure near Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities, enabled by long-term partnerships with Lineage, Inc. and other major colocation providers
• Modular, high-density, rack-scale inference capacity, engineered for cost efficiency in inference-heavy workloads and rapid deployment
• A distributed, low-latency edge fabric for seamless connectivity and workload orchestration across sites
• Full-stack operations, including a 24×7 AI-powered SOC, network services, and cluster management to meet enterprise-grade reliability and performance standards

Gruve is bringing 30MW live today across four U.S. sites, with additional capacity under development and further near-term expansions in Japan and Western Europe. This unique approach bypasses multi-year data center build cycles and delivers AI-ready capacity in months instead of years.

Built for Neoclouds, Enterprises, and AI-Native Startups
Gruve’s distributed inference infrastructure is designed for organizations moving from experimentation to production without compromising performance or economics, including:

• Neoclouds scaling inference economically at the edge
• Enterprises deploying real-time agents and mission-critical AI workloads
• AI-native startups moving from prototype to production

By placing inference close to users and data sources, Gruve reduces latency and operating costs, while improving reliability, unlocking true speed to scale for the next generation of AI applications.

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Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) this week commenced celebrations marking its fifth anniversary under the theme “Pioneering Tomorrow: AI, Science and Humanity.” The milestone marks the five-year period from 2020 to 2025, since the world’s first AI university welcomed its first cohort of students in 2020.  

His Excellency Khaldoon Khalifa Al Mubarak, Chairman of MBZUAI’s Board of Trustees, said: “Over the past five years, MBZUAI has evolved from an ambitious vision into a cornerstone of the UAE’s identity as a global AI leader. Our journey has been about more than academic excellence; it is about building the intellectual infrastructure required to power a knowledge-driven economy. By attracting and cultivating world-class talent and pioneering research that addresses real-world challenges, MBZUAI is ensuring that Abu Dhabi and the UAE are primary architects of an AI-enabled future. As we look ahead, our commitment remains clear: to harness the transformative power of AI to serve humanity, drive sustainable growth, and solidify Abu Dhabi’s position at the heart of the world’s AI map.”

Professor Eric Xing, MBZUAI President and University Professor, said:  “MBZUAI was established as part of the UAE’s long-term vision to position artificial intelligence as foundational infrastructure for a knowledge-driven economy. In five years, we have achieved leading global research rankings and helped extend the frontier of AI through initiatives such as the Institute of Foundation Models. As we enter our next phase, we are scaling MBZUAI into a comprehensive research university across disciplines including life sciences, natural sciences, advanced computing, fundamental sciences, etc. In doing so, we aim to shape how AI advances science, strengthens economies, and generates positive impact on climate, energy, public health, education, industry, and society at large.”

The University is currently ranked 10th globally in CSRankings across its core specializations, including artificial intelligence, computer vision, machine learning, natural language processing, robotics, and computational biology. Further reinforcing its international standing, MBZUAI was recently recognized among the top 50 organizations advancing the global artificial intelligence frontier at NeurIPS 2025. This reputation for excellence is underpinned by a world-class academic community of 116 faculty members, nearly half of whom joined from the world’s top 100 AI institutions, and a student body of 653 researchers representing 59 nationalities.

A defining milestone in MBZUAI’s five-year journey has been its transition from a graduate-level institution into a comprehensive university, marked by the 2025 launch of its first undergraduate program. To support this evolution, MBZUAI has expanded to eight academic departments, creating a robust multidisciplinary ecosystem. Alongside its founding pillars of Machine Learning, Computer Vision, and Natural Language Processing, the University has established departments in Robotics and Computer Science, as well as newly launched disciplines including Human-Computer Interaction, Statistics and Data Science, and Computational Biology. This expansion enables a holistic approach to AI education, bridging foundational theory with real-world applications across healthcare, engineering, and the social sciences.

The impact of this academic rigor is reflected in MBZUAI’s 318 alumni, who are now driving AI adoption across the global economy. While 44% of graduates have entered research careers, 29% have joined data and technology sectors, with others leading innovation across healthcare, defense, security, logistics, government, and energy.

Expanding its research footprint, the University established the Institute of Foundation Models (IFM), with laboratories spanning Abu Dhabi, Silicon Valley, and Paris. IFM has pioneered world-leading systems including K2-Think, among the world’s fastest reasoning systems, and Jais 2, a leading open-weight Arabic large language model.

Complementing these research achievements, the MBZUAI Incubation and Entrepreneurship Center (IEC) serves as a critical bridge between academic excellence and commercial impact. As Abu Dhabi continues to emerge as a global innovation hub, underscored by the UAE’s fifth place ranking in the Stanford Global AI Power Rankings 2025, IEC supports founders through targeted workshops, mentorship, and access to funding. In 2025, the center supported 88 undergraduate and 17 postgraduate students, with 30 startup ideas pitched following more than 150 hours of mentorship and coaching.

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GAIA is expanding into Abu Dhabi. Founded in Dubai—where the idea sparked, where the founder is based, and where the first women’s peer group took shape—GAIA was never meant to remain in one city. Its expansion into the capital is both intentional and timely. GAIA is a pioneering women’s leadership community based in Dubai with a global reach. It operates across two tiers: GAIA Elevate, a self-paced online learning platform for global members, and GAIA Leader, an intimate, in-person leadership network. Both are anchored in a single mission—to empower women to lead with authenticity, vulnerability, and growth.

Abu Dhabi holds a distinct brilliance. It is a city shaped by women who build at scale—directors, innovators, policy shapers, and institutional leaders; women accustomed to responsibility, complexity, and influence, and increasingly seeking spaces that allow for depth, reflection, and collective growth beyond titles.

GAIA Abu Dhabi launches as a closed, Director+ Peer group. The format is deliberate. Closed rooms create safety. Safety allows honesty. And honesty is where meaningful leadership work begins. By limiting the cohort to senior leaders, GAIA protects the quality of dialogue and ensures a shared level of experience—removing hierarchy while preserving depth.

The first peer session was held at Erth in Abu Dhabi. The Abu Dhabi cohort will be led by Kerry Gird, GAIA Coach and Founding Abu Dhabi Lead, bringing GAIA’s established facilitation model into the capital with local sensitivity and intent.

Marisa Kamall, Founder of GAIA, reflects on the expansion: “We started in Dubai, but GAIA was never designed to stay in one place. Abu Dhabi is home to extraordinary female leaders—thoughtful, driven, and global in outlook. GAIA is here to amplify their voices, connect them deeply, and help them rise together. This is not Dubai replicated. It is Abu Dhabi shaped—its own rhythm, richness, and strength.”

While each city will evolve on its own terms, GAIA will also bring Dubai and Abu Dhabi together through shared gatherings. Cross-emirate connection is where the network becomes a movement—where diverse rooms generate bolder thinking, faster solutions, and wider opportunity.

As part of its broader leadership ecosystem, GAIA also recently launched ChatGPShe, a bold initiative reimagining how women engage with artificial intelligence. Built on collective learning rather than top-down instruction, ChatGPShe brings women across industries together to demystify AI, share real-world experiences, and shape ethical, inclusive approaches to technology.

“With ChatGPShe, women don’t just adopt AI—they actively shape how it’s used,” says Kamall. “This isn’t about adding more tools. It’s about rewriting the answers AI gives the world.”

Together, GAIA Abu Dhabi and its wider initiatives signal a continued commitment to building spaces where women lead — not louder, but deeper, together.

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