KAUST and SABB announced the winners of the TAQADAM startup accelerator program, awarding over 4 million SAR in zero-equity funding to 11 startups. 10 winners were selected by judges to receive 375,000 SAR each, with an additional People's Choice award of the same amount. The 2020 cohort included startups from eCommerce, HealthTech, EdTech and FinTech. Why it matters: This program highlights the growing entrepreneurship ecosystem in Saudi Arabia, fostering innovation across diverse sectors and attracting international interest.
Doug Greenig, Group CEO and CIO of Florin Court Capital based in London and Abu Dhabi, discussed macro trends in 2024 and beyond. Florin Court's Programme has delivered strong returns since 2017, capturing macro themes through alternative markets. Prior to founding Florin Court, Doug held leadership roles at Man/AHL, Fortress Investment Group, and Goldman Sachs. Why it matters: The presence of a leading systematic asset manager like Florin Court in Abu Dhabi signals the growing importance of the UAE as a hub for sophisticated financial firms leveraging AI and quantitative strategies.
The AraFinNLP 2024 shared task introduced two subtasks focused on Arabic financial NLP: multi-dialect intent detection and cross-dialect translation with intent preservation. It utilized the updated ArBanking77 dataset, containing 39k parallel queries in MSA and four dialects, labeled with 77 banking-related intents. 45 teams registered, with 11 participating in intent detection (achieving a top F1 score of 0.8773) and only 1 team attempting translation (achieving a BLEU score of 1.667). Why it matters: This initiative addresses the need for specialized Arabic NLP tools in the growing Arab financial sector, promoting advancements in areas like banking chatbots and machine translation.
KAUST launched the ShenTech Bootcamp in Shenzhen, China, in collaboration with Shenzhen InnoX Academy, hosting 45 Saudi startup founders and students. The program, which ran from January 4-18, 2024, focused on equipping participants with business strategies and technical skills for developing market-ready products. KAUST also created a master’s degree graduate program: Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (TIE) which includes an immersive startup innovation experience in Shenzhen. Why it matters: This initiative fosters knowledge exchange and collaboration between Saudi and Chinese innovators, aligning with Saudi Arabia's efforts to cultivate a thriving startup ecosystem and develop hardware and software products.
Researchers at ETH Zurich have formalized models of the EMV payment protocol using the Tamarin model checker. They discovered flaws allowing attackers to bypass PIN requirements for high-value purchases on EMV cards like Mastercard and Visa. The team also collaborated with an EMV consortium member to verify the improved EMV Kernel C-8 protocol. Why it matters: This research highlights the importance of formal methods in identifying critical vulnerabilities in widely used payment systems, potentially impacting financial security for consumers in the GCC region and worldwide.