Technology’s new origin stories are emerging from hubs in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, India and Africa. Unsplash+
Since the 1960s, the story of technology has followed a familiar pattern. Innovation emerged in Silicon Valley garages, Boston laboratories or European cafés and gradually spread worldwide. Today, that pattern is changing. The future of tech is being equally developed in Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Bengaluru and Jakarta. Innovation is decentralizing, and not only in terms of infrastructure and investment but also through culture, religion and sovereignty. This new center of gravity is changing whose values will define the tools that the world will use tomorrow.
The Gulf’s ambitious tech push
The United Arab Emirates has quickly become one of the most assertive new players. In May, during President Trump’s visit, Abu Dhabi announced the release of Stargate UAE, a 10-square-mile A.I. campus spearheaded by G42. Once fully operational, it will be one of the largest A.I.-centered campuses in the world, with a planned five-gigawatt capacity and an initial 200-megawatt phase set for 2026.
Stargate will accommodate hundreds of thousands of advanced chips and is strategically located within a two-thousand-mile range of nearly half the global population. Framed as a U.S.-UAE partnership, the agreement eases previous export restrictions and charts a path for safe deployment. Cisco, SoftBank and American chipmakers have pledged support, signaling the UAE’s ambition to be not just a technology consumer but also a global authority in the A.I. ecosystem. The point was made plainly: Abu Dhabi is positioning itself as both a setter and consumer of standards.
The UAE push extends beyond hardware. It has invested billions in A.I.-driven government services designed to make public administration more predictive and efficient, including systems that assist civil servants in rapidly revising regulations. Language is also central to this strategy. The open model, Falcon Arabic, adapted to the nuances of the Arabic language, is a technological and cultural declaration. In the UAE, innovation is no longer about catching up. It’s about authorship, rooted in identity and scaled through global collaboration.
Saudi Arabia is making its own similarly bold statement. The Public Investment Fund (PIF) launched HUMAIN this year, a sovereign A.I. developing an entire stack of data centers, cloud infrastructure, language models and consumer applications. Already, the locally produced Allam-based Humain Chat serves millions of Arabic- and English-speaking users, with customized guardrails to reflect local values. More than a chatbot, this is an assertion of cultural and linguistic sovereignty.
The Kingdom supports this vision through funding and equipment. At LEAP 2025, American chipmaker that specializes in ultra-fast inference, Groq, announced a $1.5 billion expansion in Saudi Arabiabacked by the PIF. The initial large-scale HUMAIN data centers in Riyadh and Dammam, each with 100-megawatt capacity, will be launched in 2026. Alongside nearly $15 billion in additional A.I. investments announced concurrently, these steps indicate that Saudi Arabia’s goal is to become a compute powerhouse rather than a passive participant. Once talent can leverage local infrastructure in their own language, the innovation pipeline can begin at home.
India’s integration of tech with culture
India presents a complementary, yet distinct, vision. Digital products have transformed everyday life across the country. The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) currently processes over 20 billion transactions monthly, enabling small ideas to scale rapidly in a nation of 1.4 billion people. During the 2025 Mahakumbh pilgrimage, A.I. tools managed flows to the tune of millions, with multilingual assistants helping navigate complex rituals. These examples illustrate how India integrates technology with cultural and religious life, making it feel less like an import and more like a facilitator of tradition. The IndiaAI Mission, a $1.2 billion initiative supporting shared compute and multilingual models, reduces barriers for startups and researchers nationwide. The resulting ecosystem combines scale, meaning and diversity, illustrating how technology can be adapted in local contexts while still fostering innovation.
Africa and the broader Global South
Decentralization extends beyond South Asia and the Gulf. Kenya’s Konza Technopolis in Nairobi is emerging as an intelligent city supporting startups, academia and research. Yet some of the regions’ most radical innovations are rural: A.I. tools assist farmers in forecasting weather and crop yields amid volatile climatic conditions.
In Nigeria, hubs in Lagos and Ilorin support startups designing voice systems attuned to African accents. These systems help deliver healthcare services or financial tools to farmers in local dialects. While these initiatives may appear modest in comparison to a five-gigawatt A.I. campus, they share a common DNA: locally relevant innovation aimed at solving real-world problems.
Across these regions, there is a common thread. Decentralization is not just the geographic spread of technology. It is the reshaping of technology itself. The Hajj in Makkah provides key lessons in crowd management, which have applications in emergency systems across the globe. India’s street market payment rails have become benchmarks for emerging economies. African voice tools expand inclusivity. Influence spreads because these innovations are practical and culturally attuned.
Challenges and the road ahead
Hurdles remain. Infrastructure must be built, maintained and operated effectively. Laws must protect privacy and rights without choking development. Talent pipelines require years to mature. Yet the trajectory is evident: projects like Stargeate and HUMAIN are not isolated experiments. They’re declarations that new centers of gravity in tech have arrived. India, Kenya and Nigeria show that cultural context—faith, language, community—is not an inhibitor of innovation, but a guide.
The decentralization of innovation signals a paradigm shift. Global technology will no longer emerge solely from historic powerhouses. Instead, it will reflect diverse cultural and social priorities, embedding meaning and relevance into the very tools that shape our future.
YoousEe Khlubi is the Global Chief Transformation Officer and CEO MEA at Quantwhich develops cutting-edge digital employee technology.
