Author: Stuart

Street lamps, communal pathways, the width of a balcony. These aren’t afterthoughts anymore in Dubai. The Dubai Civility Committee confirmed plans on Tuesday to roll out a Civility Guidebook and new celebration guidelines, part of a broader campaign to elevate public behaviour, urban aesthetics and what officials are calling the emirate’s “standard of civility.” The programme includes an integrated city lighting plan and a full review of urban experience standards—an attempt to engineer the world’s most civilised city through design. For property developers, the implications are immediate. “Dubai is now defining not only how a city should function, but how…

The deal was signed at the Peppol Conference in Brussels on 23rd June, and it handed Dubai-based Casim something rare: exclusive multi-year rights to deliver Peppol-accredited electronic invoicing services across the UAE through Tickstar, the Swedish infrastructure firm acquired by Xero in 2021. For businesses across the Emirates, the timing couldn’t be sharper. The UAE’s mandatory eInvoicing framework is advancing fast, and companies need accredited pathways to comply. Casim now holds dual accreditation—certified as a Peppol Service Provider and pre-approved by the UAE Ministry of Finance as an eInvoicing Service Provider. That combination positions the firm as the locally anchored…

At Climate Week London on 24th June, three companies with a combined asset pipeline exceeding $140 billion announced they’re converging their capabilities into a single Abu Dhabi-based venture. Origin Assets will finance climate-aligned projects using stablecoin-backed instruments, tokenising everything from data centres to rare earth mining operations. The founders—Reef Origin, Xange.com, and NOXXO—bring distinct but complementary infrastructure to the table. Reef Origin arrives with a 25-year development track record and more than $40 billion worth of qualifying assets already in its pipeline. Xange.com contributes environmental market infrastructure and a $100 billion pipeline of forest-based carbon credits aligned with Article 6…

January 2026 marks a turning point for Saudi Arabia’s real estate sector. The Kingdom’s Real Estate General Authority confirmed on Tuesday that its Saudi Properties portal is now accepting applications from foreign nationals seeking to purchase property—a significant opening for a market that has historically restricted overseas ownership. The digital platform went live following the Foreign Real Estate Ownership Law entering force last month. REGA, the regulator overseeing the Kingdom’s property sector, has established a two-tier framework that reflects Saudi Arabia’s unique position. Across most of the country, non-Saudi individuals and companies can now acquire real estate through fully digital…

For Eman Al-Otaibi, the question stayed lodged in her mind for months: how do you support a student who exists nowhere in your data? On 24 June 2026, her answer completed its two-year trial. That Tuesday, educational leaders gathered in Amman for a milestone that didn’t involve test scores or graduation rates. Instead, the event at the University of Jordan marked the moment AnaAkhtar—a UAE-based platform built specifically for school counsellors—shifted from field validation to institutional adoption. Two years of implementation across private schools and nine public institutions had produced something increasingly rare in educational technology: evidence that focusing on…

Earlier this year, Khamzat Chimaev, UFC Middleweight Champion and one of the most dominant athletes in modern MMA, was officially welcomed as the new brand ambassador for Sharmax Motors. The partnership was presented on 3 February 2026 during an event held at the Sharmax showroom in Dubai. Sharmax Motors: A growing powersports brand  The brand name became widely known in the UAE back in 2023 when the company announced the opening of its largest operational hub in Dubai. Since then, the Sharmax dealership network has grown across the Middle East into Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. Apart from the MENA…

In blind head-to-head evaluations, ClickUp’s newly launched Brain2 defeated standalone ChatGPT and Claude every single time. Not 95%. Not 99%. Every time. The San Diego-based company unveiled Brain2 on Tuesday, pitching it as something fundamentally different from the AI tools already flooding the market. While OpenAI and Anthropic race to build more powerful models, ClickUp is betting on a different advantage: memory. Not the kind that recalls your last three prompts, but the kind that knows every task your engineering team committed to, every KPI your operations team tracks, and every decision your company made last quarter. “The model isn’t…

IMAN Holdings has spent six years building an Islamic banking app in Central Asia that now serves more than one million users. On Monday, the company disclosed plans to raise $100 million to bring that platform—and its conversational AI backbone—into the Gulf. The fundraise targets GCC markets where Islamic finance is already well-established, but where mobile-first challengers remain scarce. Founded in 2020, IMAN operates a Shariah-compliant platform that bundles savings, investments, payments and financial guidance into a single mobile app. The company currently manages over $100 million in assets and has previously raised more than $10 million from unnamed global…

A UAE-based company paid AED124 million for 40,000 square feet of office space at Vision Tower on 22nd June, marking Dubai’s largest commercial real estate transaction of its kind. The buyer wasn’t disclosed. The acquisition—a contiguous block of Grade A office space spanning multiple floors in the Business Bay landmark—forms part of an expansion strategy by a local firm willing to pay top price for premium positioning. fäm Properties brokered the deal. That price tag sets a benchmark. Business Bay has seen steady office demand since Dubai’s post-pandemic recovery, but transactions at this scale remain rare. The sale underscores a…

Paragon Studio launched Altitude on 22nd June, pitching resistance band exercises and mindfulness videos to airlines hunting for the next in-flight amenity edge. The London-based firm, which typically installs bespoke gyms in private homes and superyachts, reckons aircraft cabins represent wellness’s last unconquered frontier. The timing matters. While hotels compete on sleep programmes and offices debate standing desks, passengers still arrive stiff, depleted and irritable after long-haul flights. Edward Thomas founded Paragon Studio to serve clients who demand gym equipment that matches their interior design standards. Now he’s wrestling with a trickier brief: making meaningful movement possible in an economy…