The Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy signed an MoU with Alibaba Cloud to offer Dubai companies agentic AI training, startup compute credits, and support for enterprise pilots. The digital economy chamber is one of three chambers under Dubai Chambers, and Alibaba Cloud is the AI infrastructure arm of China’s Alibaba Group.
Startups will get technology credits, compute resources, and software licences to build AI agents that automatically carry out business tasks. For larger firms, the deal outlines a path from a trial to a live system, plus a place to sell what works.
Saeed Al Gergawi, Vice President of Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy, signed the agreement with Dr. Feifei Li, CTO and President of International Business at Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. They signed it at Dubai Chambers’ recent Dubai Business Forum – China in Shenzhen.
The MoU covers three areas:
- Training: through the Dubai Chambers Academy, staff will get training content, certifications, technical workshops, expert-led sessions, and train-the-trainer programmes.
- Startups: technical mentorship, technology credits, compute resources, and software licences, with selected startups connected to Alibaba Cloud’s own programmes and network.
- Enterprises: the two will explore support for pilots and production deployments, offer implementation expertise, and showcase proven solutions on Alibaba Cloud Marketplace, its online store for third-party apps and services.
They’ll also put together case studies on the business impact and commercial value of what companies build. The MoU is a framework, but neither side has given a value, a start date, or how many companies and startups will take part. The enterprise strand only commits to “explore” support.
Agentic AI is moving from experimentation to everyday business use, and the companies that move first will set the pace for Dubai’s digital economy.
Eric Wan, GM Middle East, Turkey and Central Asia, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence
The deal feeds a programme launched by Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, to move the private sector towards agentic AI. In September, Dubai Chambers laid out agentic AI training for 14,000 member companies, and in October Dubai CommerCity signed its own agentic AI MoU. Al Gergawi says international partnerships like this one give Dubai-based companies broader access to specialised technologies and expertise.
Alibaba Cloud has served UAE customers since 2016, and Wio Bank already builds on its Qwen models. In October 2025, it opened its second Dubai data centre at GITEX Global, part of Alibaba’s RMB 380 billion (US$53 billion) three-year AI and cloud investment plan. The enterprise pilots are the part to watch, since that strand has no commitments yet.
