Code Story
Minting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, with Mohammad Albalooshi, CEO, DIFC Innovation Hub
Wed, 05 Feb 2025
Today, we are releasing another episode in our series entitled Minting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, sponsored by the City of Dubai. Dubai is the new global center of gravity, connecting the world in a way few places can. As a hub for trade, tourism, innovation, and finance, Dubai offers the ideal environment for startups and scale-ups to thrive. Entrepreneurs find a home here, whether in health-tech, fintech, AI, or renewable energy, supported by SME-focused programs that empower high-potential companies to scale globally. From flexible regulations to tax incentives, world-class infrastructure to access to global investors managing $1 trillion, Dubai understands what businesses need to scale fast. For today’s episode, we are speaking with Mohammad Albalooshi, CEO of the DIFC Innovation Hub, a driving force behind Dubai’s innovation ecosystem and a key player in empowering startups and scaleups across the MEASA region.Questions: Tell me and my audience a little bit about you.What is the DIFC Innovation Hub, and what role does it play in driving innovation in Dubai and the broader region? How did it come to be, and what vision does it fulfill?Can you tell us more about the Dubai AI Campus? What is its mission, and how does it support the development of AI-driven innovation?So I’m an entrepreneur looking to build the next big thing in fintech — how does the DIFC Innovation Hub support startups and scaleups in this space? Can you share some examples of companies that have benefited from your ecosystem?Dubai is positioning itself as a global hub for fintech and innovation. How does the DIFC contribute to making this vision a reality?Is it necessary for entrepreneurs to be physically located in Dubai or the MEASA region to join the DIFC Innovation Hub and its programs, or can global innovators participate from anywhere in the world?What are the Dubai AI License and the DIFC License? How do these frameworks support entrepreneurs and businesses within the innovation ecosystem?How is DIFC planning to expand its role in the innovation ecosystem over the next 5-10 years?What new programs or initiatives can we expect to see from the DIFC Innovation Hub to attract global talent and businesses?What advice would you give to startups and entrepreneurs, particularly those from outside the UAE, who are considering Dubai as a base for their operations?Linkshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/mohammad-alblooshi-2499b54a/https://blockchaincenter.ae/https://dubaiaicampus.com/https://www.difc.ae/ https://www.investindubai.gov.ae/en/why-dubai/d33-agendaOur Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.com* Check out Vanta: https://vanta.com/CODESTORYSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Hello listeners, today we are releasing another episode in our series entitled Minting Unicorns, Blockchain, AI, and Dubai, sponsored by the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism, or DET. Dubai is the new global center of gravity, connecting the world in a way few places can.
From flexible regulations to tax incentives, world-class infrastructure to access to global investors managing a trillion dollars in investment money, Dubai understands what businesses need to scale fast.
For today's episode, we are speaking with Mohamed Albulushi, CEO of the DIFC Innovation Hub, a driving force behind Dubai's innovation ecosystem and a key player in empowering startups and scale-ups across the MISA region. Well, Mohamed, thank you for being on the show today. Thank you for being on CodeStory. Well, thank you for having me, Noah. Absolutely.
I'm excited to talk about the DIFC and all the things going on there. But before we move into that topic, tell me in my audience a little bit about you.
So, of course, currently I run the DIFC's Innovation Hub. DIFC stands for Dubai International Financial Centre, which is a very unique financial centre in the Middle East and North Africa markets. It has its own legal and regulatory infrastructure. It's based on English common law, has its own court system.
it kind of acts like a city within a city and within that city i am responsible for its innovation ecosystem which technically is is the largest of its kind in the entire region but by background i'm a banker so i did about the first eight years of my career i was in banking so i did some corporate banking and some private banking in about 2016 end of 2016 i i moved to the government and i
I joined the IFC and ever since I've been driving the innovation mandate at the IFC. So for fun these days, if I get some time off, I just try and watch some TV. It really helps me, you know, take a break and shift my mind from everything else. So But apart from that, these days I hang with friends. And back in the day, of course, there was a lot more activity.
But these days I don't have much time.
Well, cool. I appreciate that. Let's move into our topic then. So what is the DIFC Innovation Hub and what role does it play in driving innovation in Dubai? Which is there's a lot of innovation going on. There's a lot of focus on tech and technology.
and building the next set of unicorns, and I'm just curious where the DIFC comes into play, and how did it even come to be, and what vision does it fulfill?
So DIFC Innovation Hub is the largest startup ecosystem in the Middle East and North African region. Today, it's home to more than a thousand fintech and innovation companies, so startups. And again, the aim is to build and, of course, cater towards the startup community. The beauty of the DIFC Innovation Hub is that It sits within the financial center of Dubai.
And it, of course, benefits from the unique legal and regulatory infrastructure. So, you know, the common law framework, it enjoys the court system, the unique IP law, the data protection laws, which are quite attractive to startups and tech companies in particular. Geographically, the IFC is in downtown Dubai. It's right next to the Burj.
So this center that we've established also sits in the center of the city, makes it pretty accessible from any part of the city, and it's in a pretty vibrant place. I think what also makes a lot of sense for DIFC is the proximity to all the financial institutions and all the, let's say, money managers. I usually say startups want to be next to all the investors.
So DIFC, of course, is home to the who's who of the world and, of course, the who's who of the region. For startups to be next to that pool of capital, that makes a lot of sense. It started with a very, I would say, a humble idea back in 2016, when Dubai had made it very clear that it wants to be at the forefront of innovation.
And the IFC, of course, wanted to position itself as a leader in the space. In a very humble way, we created an accelerator just to understand, because before that, the IFC always catered towards the large financial institutions and service providers. But I think in 2016, we realized that we have to look at startups because there was a lot of potential in startups.
And it was clear to us that a lot of the growth for us is going to come from startups. So how do we now build a proposition or position ourselves as a hub for that ecosystem? So we started looking at the ecosystem by launching an accelerator program. What that did is it taught us a lot. I still remember, you know, all of a sudden we started speaking to a clientele that is very different.
I usually make a joke. I say startups want everything and they don't want to pay for it. Because they want a lot of handholding, they want a lot of financial support, a lot of financial subsidy. I think making that case to the leadership that this is a sector that we need to invest in, in the beginning, but in the long term, that will do great for Dubai.
And of course, from an economic growth perspective for the IFC, of course. And honestly, we're seeing that today. Today, we have companies that have gone very big in size. They've been able to raise and attract a lot of global capital, and they've created a lot of jobs, which essentially is our top main priority, creating jobs, next generation jobs. That's one of my main KPIs.
So I think a humble beginning. I think the first time when we started, we took an office space of about 3,000 square feet. Today, the Innovation Hub spans over more than 300,000 square feet. So it has grown 100x over the last six years, even when it comes to the number of jobs that have been created or the number of companies, how it has grown over the last few years.
Okay, that's fantastic. Alongside the DIFC, I'm curious if you can tell me a little bit about the Dubai AI Campus. You know, what's its mission and how does it support the development of AI-driven innovation?
You know, we started our fintech journey in 2017, and we did pretty good. I think we grew significantly, and we created and dedicated the largest startup ecosystem in the region. And it was sometime in 23 when AI, of course, became AI. We talked to ourselves. We said, what can we do when it comes to AI?
And I think the question we said to ourselves that the thing that we do best is creating ecosystems. We've done it really well when it comes to professional services and financial services. We did it for startups in fintech and surrounding sectors. AI is so big and it's going to, let's say, it will cut through all sectors. We believe it needs a much more dedicated approach.
Hence, we said, why not be a bit ambitious and look at it from a Dubai perspective? And this goes back to, you know, if you look at Dubai and how Dubai basically creates these ecosystems, if today you were to look at Dubai, there's a specific jurisdiction that caters to, for example, design. There's a specific jurisdiction that caters and is responsible for sector development.
There's a specific jurisdiction that focuses on media development. the specific sector that focuses on finance, on education. So I think that's where we said we could potentially build an entire cluster for AI.
And I think we also believed that probably our jurisdiction, given the common law and the unique regulatory framework, positions us best to do it all over again, build an entire ecosystem for artificial intelligence companies. And I think when we started looking at artificial intelligence, we saw it very clearly that it has to be much more than what we had done in the past.
Of course, we have the playbook from what we did for the IFC Innovation Hub in terms of attracting VCs and startups and creating licenses, unique license offerings for them. But for AI, we went and partnered with the likes of NVIDIA, AWS, Microsoft, all the key players. for them to be partners of the AI campus.
So all of these big institutions, they actually power the AI campus by providing specific tools that startups and companies that reside in the AI campus can leverage. We created dedicated licenses, AI-specific licenses, And again, our aim is that we want to attract 500 companies, 500 AI companies by 2028 and hopefully create north of 3000 jobs by that time, AI specific jobs.
And again, given the amount of interest that we see and the amount of traction we see, we believe those are achievable numbers. There's a much bigger agenda. Dubai, of course, has a universal blueprint for artificial intelligence. The AI campus is one of the key initiatives of that strategy.
So let's move into some practical things. So I'm an entrepreneur looking to build the next big thing in fintech plus AI, right? How does the DIFC Innovation Hub support startups and scale-ups in this space? And are there any examples that you could share of businesses that have benefited from your ecosystem?
Sure, Noah. So I think, you know, as I was mentioning, we started looking at this new ecosystem and we constantly keep in touch with them to see what do they need. From very early days, we looked at their licensing and regulatory requirements. So we created our own regulatory sandbox that actually becomes a testbed for these companies. We created licenses which are curated to their requirements.
We created co-working spaces for the first time in the center just to make sure that we actually bring an ecosystem that resonates with startups and entrepreneurs. We brought in accelerator programs. So through the accelerator programs, we actually give access to market. So, I mean, if you ask any startup, what do they usually, what do they need?
It would be access to market, access to capital, regulatory support, and access to talent. We try and enable all of that through the DIFC Innovation Hub, and we've been able to. I mean, there have been a lot of companies that have gone through our accelerator programs, gone through our sandboxes, and we ourselves invest in startups as well. But not only that, we try and enable investment as well.
So one is our own investment fund, but then we take it upon us to try and develop the entire VC ecosystem by attracting other VCs and by encouraging, let's say, family offices to look at this asset class. Some of the success stories, I mean, we actually had our first unicorn last year in 24, a buy-now-pay-later company called Tabby that was valued at $1.5 billion.
Our first robo-advisory company was out of a real estate crowdfunding company. Companies like Stakedata, they actually fractionalize real estate ownership, given real estate that divides the huge real estate market. And there could be many other examples that are there. And honestly, there's so much more that we believe that will come out of this ecosystem.
That's super exciting. Okay, so Dubai is positioning itself as a global hub for fintech, for AI, and for innovation. How does the DIFC contribute to making this vision a reality? And I think you've said a few things that have kind of pointed to where you're going there, but I want to give space for a full answer.
It's a mix of many things. One is we want to make sure we have the best in class soft infrastructure. By that, I mean legal framework, the regulatory framework. I think for fintechs globally, I mean, getting a fintech regulator is not easy. The good thing that we have in our part of the world, the regulators are quite progressive and they've made it public as well.
So I think giving them a regulatory environment which is progressive and willing to work with startups is very important. Also, the physical environment is extremely important because at the end of the day, these are engineers, these are entrepreneurs. They want to work in an environment which is attractive and a bit more, as mentioned there, something that resonates with startups.
So Dubai, of course, does a great job in doing that. But I think more importantly for founders, the ability to attract talent. I think Dubai does a phenomenal job in terms of kind of making it as easy as possible for startups to set up shop. I mean, us at the IFC, it's... I would say one of the most easiest jurisdictions to kind of set up a startup and then to be able to actually operate.
So the time from setting up an entity and then to actually operating, getting your immigration done and getting your bank accounts done. I think all of that is provided as a one-stop shop. So that helps a lot. To elevate Dubai's position, we also try and focus a lot on the community and ecosystem development.
strategic partnerships with all the major hubs to enable cross-border collaboration for our startups that want to expand outside. But we also host major events. I mean, one of the main things that we do is the Dubai FinTech Summit, where we try and bring the global FinTech community to Dubai. And I think that really helps elevate Dubai's position as a FinTech hub and as a startup hub.
One thing that Dubai has made very clear from top down, from the government, it's very clear that we want to innovate. Every industry is trying to push the boundaries of innovation. So there's a lot of demand and willingness to innovate, which essentially what that means is the willingness to collaborate with startups.
A lot of startups actually want to work with other institutions, be it financial institutions or other conventional institutions. So I think for global startups, I would really urge them to look at Dubai because there's so much happening and there's so much demand for people who are looking for solutions. And we actually do this as well.
We work with all our corporate partners and help them in scouting startups and innovative technologies.
Very cool. Okay, so I want to kind of... Backtrack a little bit to a question that I think is interesting, and it touches on some of the things you said about talent and visas and some of those benefits there. Is it necessary for entrepreneurs to be physically located in Dubai or in the MISA region to join the Innovation Hub and its programs?
Or are global innovators able to participate from anywhere in the world?
To obtain, of course, the DIFC Innovation License and to be part of the DIFC Innovation Hub, It's a physical community. So, yes, you have to be on ground. And honestly, our accelerator programs, I think, are the perfect platform for global startups that are actually looking to enter the market. It gives you the right platform to come and get a pulse of the market and then establish and scale.
Also, I think, you know, events such as Dubai Fintech Summit, we also host them so people from other parts of the world can actually come to Dubai and get a pulse of the market, engage with the community, and then hopefully they like the community and the ecosystem here and decide to set up shop and be on ground.
Excellent. I appreciate that answer. That's really good to clarify there. I want to move on to the Dubai AI license and the DIFC license. I think you may have touched on that a little bit, but what are they? Let's define what those are and how do these frameworks support entrepreneurs and businesses within the innovation ecosystem?
For you to operate, you would need a license, a commercial license. You need to set up a legal entity for you to be able to, of course, open a bank account, a business bank account, and hire people and so on and so forth. So I think in the IFC, given its unique legal framework, we've been able to create dedicated licenses. So initially, we had the IFC Innovation License.
which is heavily subsidized to be able to support startups. It's 90% subsidized because our thesis is that, you know, when startups are early stage, they have an idea. We want to make it as easy as possible for these guys to kind of come and launch their ideas. But that is a DRC jurisdiction license. It allows you to operate as a full-fledged entity in a free zone. It can be 100% foreign owned.
There's no restriction on capital repatriation, no restriction on foreign talent. Now, I think our approach on the AI license was curating an activity which is dedicated. So when you apply for an AI license, we of course look at the business model. It goes through a committee. You're actually somebody that has built or is actually using AI.
So that is more of a validation that yes, you are an AI entity and you get an AI license. So I think for AI companies to come and set up, this is sort of a validation as well that, yes, you are an AI company and you're licensed by Dubai government as an AI entity, which also enables them to kind of go and work with other government entities.
So there's big plans, right, for Dubai. There's big plans for how to be the hub of innovation and AI and blockchain and fintech and all the things, right? How is DIFC planning to expand its role in this innovation ecosystem, say, over the next five to 10 years?
So I think there's been multiple announcements in terms of our expansion plans to be able to cater to the demand. And as mentioned earlier, we're very bullish on the sector. We believe this will create a lot of growth for us. And growth for us is mainly companies that are successful and create a lot of jobs. And in return, of course, has a ripple effect on the GDP.
We, of course, have announced that the innovation ecosystem will grow significantly. We just moved into innovation one, and that is additional space of 200,000 square feet. And we further announced the IFC innovation two, which is even more space that should be ready sometime in 26, just to be able to cater to the demand that is coming.
And I think on the AI side, we have announced that by 28, we should have a dedicated campus, which will have more than 100,000 square feet, which will be a facility of 100,000 square feet. And it will be home to more than 500 companies. Definitely, there is more investment going into the community. We want to make sure that we're catering to the demand and the growth of these companies.
But at the same time, we're looking at further enriching the community. So we continuously look at what else can be done to support the growth of startups. How can we try and bring in venture studios into the mix? How can we try and bring family offices into the mix and other corporates as well who could come and partner and help these startups scale?
Fantastic. Okay, a few more questions. What new programs or initiatives can we expect to see from the DIFC Innovation Hub? And I think you've touched on this again at a high level, but to attract global talent and businesses, what are some of the programs and initiatives that DFC is really going to focus on?
Honestly, we've been running programs for almost seven, eight years now. Initially, a lot of the programs were focused on fintech, which continue to run. We, of course, do serve a lot of the financial institutions. But recently with AI, we're working with one of our telcos, for example, Do, that is looking at AI for SMEs. So how can AI enable small and medium enterprises?
We have a program with Ripple. It's called Ripple XRPL Scale-Up Accelerator Program. Another interesting one is we're doing a global AI challenge with Dubai Civil Defense, where actually we're looking at using AI for fire prediction. And then, of course, we do some programs cross-border as well. We do some programs that are for specific use cases within financial institutions.
So there's a number of programs. I think another thing that we try to do is we don't want to just run our own programs. We also want to make sure that there are other players that run programs. So, for example, we have Antler based in the Innovation Hub as well that runs a lot of programs from the DIFC Innovation Hub.
Last question, Mohamed. What advice would you give to startups and entrepreneurs, particularly those from outside the UAE, who are considering Dubai as a base for their operations, right? They're excited about what they're doing. They're building amazing things. And they're looking at Dubai and going, yeah, they've got everything I need. What advice do you give those folks?
Leverage the friendly ecosystem to your advantage. Dubai is extremely bullish. We as the IFC are extremely bullish on startups and what they can bring in. There's a lot of focus. The D33 strategy, of course, pushes growth and enablement of startups significantly. There is leverage, of course, the free zones that are available in Dubai. Take advantage of the government initiatives.
The network is great. Also, I think it's a jurisdiction where you'd be able to attract top talent. You yourselves, I'm sure, would love to be here to be able to grow your business, I think. as government entity as a city, we're trying to make sure that we create the best ecosystem for startups for them to be able to grow and thrive. So try and learn about it.
Try and visit if you haven't visited already, because I personally feel everything is being curated to support growth of startups.
Well, that's fantastic. Well, Mohamed, I really appreciate you being on the show today. It's very clear that the DIFC is a hub for innovation for Dubai. And this just adds to my understanding of all of the things that Dubai is offering to attract fantastic talent, fantastic companies and meant the next set of unicorns. So I really appreciate you being on the show today. Thank you. Thank you.
I really enjoyed being on the show.
Big time thanks to Mohamed for giving us a deeper understanding of how the DIFC Innovation Hub is shaping the future of innovation in Dubai. It's clear that the DIFC is a beacon of opportunity for startups and scale-ups looking to make a global impact. As a reminder, you can check out the resources mentioned during the show by visiting the show notes.
There are links to the Dubai Blockchain Center, AI Campus, D33 Economic Agenda, and much more. And thanks again for listening.