Chris Erasmus, General Manager, UAE, Rest of Middle East and North Africa at AWS, and Timothy Baldwin, Provost and Professor of Natural Language Processing at MBZUAI
The multi-year collaboration agreement between Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) and Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a development that we believe marks a turning point for the region’s tech landscape. By combining MBZUAI’s scientific depth with AWS’s massive cloud infrastructure, the UAE is effectively building a “high-speed lane” for AI innovation.
Our analysis suggests that the true value of this partnership isn’t just the cloud credits, it’s the integration of industry-grade tools into the classroom. Traditionally, there is a gap between what students learn in a lab and what they encounter in a corporate environment.
We interpret the alignment with the UAE’s National Strategy for Higher Education 2030 as a masterstroke in workforce development. Through the “Expanded Professional Experience” initiative, students aren’t just reading about AI; they are building it on the same platforms used by global tech giants. This ensures that the next generation of Emirati talent isn’t just “AI-literate” but “industry-ready” from day one.
We also notice a significant focus on the “last mile” of innovation: commercialization. By linking MBZUAI’s Incubation and Entrepreneurship Center with the AWS Activate program, the university is creating a seamless pipeline for startups.
From our perspective, this removes one of the biggest hurdles for AI founders: the high cost of compute. Eligible startups can now access mentorship and cloud resources that would otherwise be out of reach, turning student research into viable, scalable businesses. This doesn’t just benefit the university; it feeds directly into the UAE’s goal of becoming a global hub for digital entrepreneurship.
To us, this partnership reinforces MBZUAI’s role as more than just a school, it is becoming a “national champion” for applied AI. The launch of the GenAI Academy and the focus on “social impact hackathons” prove that the goal here is practical problem-solving, not just academic prestige. By embedding real-world experience into every level of research and education, MBZUAI and AWS are providing the missing link for the UAE’s digital transformation.
