With over 1100 startups and over 81 countries in participation, the Web Summit, one of the biggest technology conferences opened in Doha Qatar earlier this week. Held for the first time in the Middle East, the Qatar Web Summit kicked off with the country’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani committing to invest over $1 billion in international and regional venture capital funds. Qatar aims to be a regional IT hub.
A ‘fund of funds’ the focus of the programme is to attract top international VC funds to Qatar and the GCC region. At the conference Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani emphasised that Qatar has had strong commitments towards technological advancement. Like most recent conferences that took place in the region, the Web Summit at Qatar too had a focus on artificial intelligence (AI).
There is a growing push by Qatar towards building the country as a hub for technology and AI. At the recent state visit to Paris, Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani has also pledged to invest over $10.9 billion in French technology startups and technology funds between 2024 and 2030.
The investments will be in the spaces of AI, semiconductors, health, hospitality, and aerospace to name a few.
The Web Summit as reported by Al Jazeera stated, Trevor Noah was the headline speaker at the Summit, the former host of the Emmy Award winning show The Daily Show, what was interesting is that Noah is also an investor in the technology sector and is the Chief Questions Officer at Microsoft, where he hosts a multi-episode series, where he discusses with a guest on how AI can solve for global issues.
At the Summit he stated that he always loved tech, and has never stopped trying to learn all the ways it can be used effectively. Noah added while it is often said that technology will replace us, there currently is a limited definition of what ‘us’ is. He added technology has always replaced what people have done or how they have done a task. However, people have remained and also the larger question he added is how does AI redefine what humans need or want to do.
