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GCC economies are forecast to grow strongly in 2026, with the UAE expected at 5% and Saudi GDP at 4.3%, driven by domestic demand, non-oil expansion, and rising AI investment.
Presight reported 22% Q1 revenue growth driven by sovereign AI deployments, while UAE reinforced its leadership in Generative AI with new government and enterprise initiatives. A UAE developer unveiled a native Arabic AI app builder generating production-grade code from a single prompt.
Help AG reported multiple active threats in the region: Handala actors launched a hybrid campaign targeting military personnel via WhatsApp spoofing and wiper attacks; BlueNoroff targeted cryptocurrency organizations; and APT-C-49 (OilRig) conducted multi-stage spear-phishing using macro-enabled Excel files.
Saudi-based fintech Stream secured a $5.2M seed extension led by BECO Capital with participation from STV. GCC startups raised $512M across 46 equity rounds in 2026 through April, with fintech leading sector funding. Mubadala also led CredibleX's Series A within a broader $15M round.
Microsoft released Visual Studio 2026 May Update with deep AI platform integration, Copilot Planning mode for code-free implementation design, multi-file summary diffs, and Agent Skills management. A Harness report meanwhile found that 69% of frequent AI coding users face deployment problems, highlighting a DevOps maturity gap.