Dubai launches plan to put Agentic AI in private sector

Dubai has launched a two-year programme to transition its private sector toward Agentic AI, a new generation of artificial intelligence that can act independently to complete tasks with minimal human input. Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of The Executive Council of Dubai, announced the initiative under the directives of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, with the goal of making Dubai the world's leading city in adopting these technologies economically and commercially. The programme will introduce specialized training for business councils under the Dubai Chamber of Commerce, along with incubators and dedicated funding to support startups and companies working in Agentic AI. The move leverages Dubai's strong digital infrastructure and business-friendly policies, building on existing platforms like DubaiNow and the Dubai Centre for Artificial Intelligence, as part of the Dubai Economic Agenda (D33). Meanwhile, San Francisco-based startup Nova Intelligence has raised a $31.5 million Series A round led by Chemistry to build an agentic AI platform for SAP systems. The investment brings total funding to more than $40 million, with participation from Accel, Conviction, and SAP.io, SAP's venture arm. Nova analyzes, modernizes, and generates custom code for SAP environments that run payroll, supply chains, and finance functions at Fortune 500 companies. The timing aligns with SAP's mandatory migration deadline, recently extended from 2027 to 2030, for customers to move to the modern S/4HANA platform, with analysts pegging the broader opportunity at more than $89 billion. A case study with Kyndryl showed Nova's system led to a 75% reduction in manual effort and 50% cost reduction in platform modernization. In India, Krutrim, the country's first GenAI unicorn, is pivoting from AI model development to cloud services following months of limited product activity and significant layoffs. Founded by Bhavish Aggarwal, who also leads Ola and Ola Electric, the Bengaluru-based startup raised $50 million at a $1 billion valuation in January 2024 but has since cut more than 200 roles and pulled its Kruti AI assistant app from app stores in April. Despite reporting approximately $31.52 million in revenue for financial year 2026 with its first annual net profit and margins exceeding 10%, Krutrim is now seeing growing demand for its AI cloud services with more than 25 enterprise customers across telecom, financial services, and healthcare. Analysts note that infrastructure may be the more viable near-term play in India's AI market, as the company redirects capital and talent from chip design efforts toward cloud services.