How AI is transforming Dubai’s business environment and economy: Insights from Dubai AI Week 2025

• Dubai AI Week 2025 displays the emirate’s undeniable leadership in AI.
• The week-long event brought together 10,000 global experts, innovators, and investors from over 100 countries.
• Doing business in Dubai has become more attractive due to sector-specific initiatives like the AI Retreat, AI Academy, and AI Campus.

The inaugural edition of Dubai AI Week set a new standard for large-scale, multi-sectoral engagement around artificial intelligence. It took place from April 21 to April 25, 2025, under the leadership of H.H. Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai Crown Prince, UAE Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Dubai Future Foundation.

The week-long event served as a platform to highlight emerging AI capabilities while acting as a catalyst for business development. It signalled to global entrepreneurs that Dubai provides an ideal ecosystem for starting a business within the UAE, particularly in Dubai.

Overseen by the Dubai Future Foundation (DFF) and organised by the Dubai Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DCAI), the event was hosted at iconic venues such as the Museum of the Future and AREA 2071 at Emirates Towers. It brought together over 10,000 participants from more than 100 countries, including leading tech figures, policymakers, academics, and entrepreneurs.

The AI Week event further enriched the city’s stand as a leader in AI advancement and aligned with the Dubai Universal Blueprint for Artificial Intelligence (DUB.AI) — a strategy designed to double AI’s contribution to GDP and enhance global competitiveness.

Sector-specific events and initiatives: Key highlights

Building on the momentum of the successful AI Retreat in June 2024, Dubai AI Week 2025 expanded into a citywide celebration of AI innovation. The program included flagship events such as:

• Dubai AI Retreat;
• Dubai Assembly for AI;
• Global Prompt Engineering Championship;
• Dubai AI Festival;
• Machines Can See conference, and many others

Each was designed to fuel targeted dialogues around AI policy, talent, ethics, and commercialisation. The 2025 AI Retreat alone launched 10 strategic initiatives focused on integrating AI into sectors like health, education, finance, and logistics.

Held at the Museum of the Future, the retreat featured high-level roundtables attended by government decision-makers and technology visionaries. Moreover, insightful discussions centred on data empowerment, digital infrastructure, capital deployment, and talent development.

AI integrated in the education and healthcare industries

To highlight AI’s impact across sectors, DFF and DCAI introduced two new events to the conference: the 8th International Conference on Education Quality and the HIMSS Executive Summit 2025.

The Education Quality Conference took place at the Grand Hyatt Dubai in partnership with the Emirates Academy for Identity and Citizenship. It attracted over 200 research submissions and concluded with the launch of an AI Innovation Lab. This lab emphasised how integrating AI into public institutions can transform educational outcomes, enhance academic excellence, and create scalable training systems.

In parallel, the HIMSS Executive Summit 2025, organised in collaboration with the Dubai Health Authority and Emirates Health Services, explored generative AI, genomics, and digital healthcare transformation. Additionally, industry leaders from across the Middle East gathered to discuss AI’s impact on healthcare efficiency, precision medicine, and patient-centric delivery.

Undoubtedly, both conferences improved the strategic direction of the larger UAE government and exhibited the benefits of starting a business in Dubai for entrepreneurs in ed-tech and health-tech areas.

A glimpse at Dubai AI Week by 2026

In 2026, Dubai will host ‘AI@70: Towards a Global Humanity,’ a global milestone that will mark the 70th anniversary of the seminal Dartmouth Workshop, where AI was born as an academic discipline.

Supported officially by Dartmouth College, this event will convene philosophers, technologists, and industry visionaries to explore the socio-ethical frameworks of AI. The conference will serve as the foundation for the ‘Humanity Lab,’ an eight-week incubator housed at the DIFC’s Dubai AI Campus, combining art, ethics, and technology to develop novel AI products focused on human-centric design.

With planning led by the DIFC and strategic advisory from APCO (a global advisory firm), AI@70 is set to reinforce the emirate’s role as a hub of technology and as a convening ground for international thought leadership. These developments are integral for firms assessing the benefits of starting a business in Dubai — from deep institutional support to thought leadership ecosystems that span the public and private sectors.

Why entrepreneurs choose Dubai’s AI-driven business sector

The emirate’s AI-focused strategy is redefining what it means to operate in a competitive, innovation-led economy. Through events such as Dubai AI Week, the city proves its ability to convert that vision into tangible business opportunities. Simply put, entrepreneurs are finding it beneficial to do business in Dubai due to its regulatory agility, talent development, access to capital, and world-class infrastructure.

The week-long event also emphasised six sectors impacted by AI:

• Government and regulators;
• Global industry leaders;
• Future Talent;
• Start-ups and investors;
• Tech innovators; and
• Education stakeholders.

Each segment saw focused engagement — whether through policy roundtables at the AI Retreat or talent showcases at the AI Festival and Hackathon. This enabled start-ups to connect with VCs, access funding channels, and scale operations. Moreover, the AI Campus’s business acceleration programs and targeted AI licensing models strategically simplify how to start a company in Dubai.

Final thoughts

Dubai AI Week has once again highlighted the emirate’s pursuit of becoming an AI-first, business-centric metropolis equipped with visionary leadership, state-of-the-art facilities, and progressive policy structures. For global investors, researchers, and entrepreneurs, the event served as an unmistakable signal that doing business in Dubai is as viable as it is ideal.

Truly, the city is laying the foundations for a future where artificial intelligence is but built better, smarter, and for the benefit of all.