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Microsoft's commitment to the UAE's AI transformation took centre stage at the recent GITEX Global 2025, where the tech giant unveiled a suite of initiatives designed to embed artificial intelligence across education, industry, and government. At the company's AI Tour held in Dubai earlier this month, Microsoft announced the expansion of its Elevate UAE skilling programme, targeting over 250,000 students, educators, and government employees by the end of 2027.

The initiative will embed AI literacy and hands-on training across educational institutions, including 100,000 students in GEMS private schools, while offering sustained programmes and partnerships with cutting-edge AI tools.

The AI Tour brought together leaders from education, technology, and industry to explore how AI can drive innovation, productivity, and sustainable growth, showcasing keynote sessions and real-world case studies that demonstrated how organisations are translating AI potential into tangible impact.

Microsoft also reinforced its commitment to the UAE through its $15bn investment in the nation's AI ecosystem, focusing on technology, talent, and trust to strengthen the country's long-term vision for innovation, education, and inclusive growth.

Here, Amr Kamel, GM of Microsoft UAE, discusses the company's mission to democratise AI access, the strategic importance of partnerships like the one with G42, and what visitors experienced at Microsoft's GITEX presence, including the emphasis on agentic AI, skills enablement, and empowering every individual and organisation to achieve more in an AI-native economy.

Since you've taken up the role, how are you aligning your plans with Microsoft's global mission and the local focus here in the UAE?

I think one of the things that really drives and guides everything we do in Microsoft is our mission, which is to empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more.

While it's a global vision, it's very true in current times as well, especially with everything we see with AI. So, from a UAE perspective, that's exactly our mission ahead of us: empowering every person and every organization with AI to achieve more. And we really mean it with the word "person" -- every resident, every citizen, and every organisation of all sizes, small and medium, government, you name it.

I think it's so inspiring to see how the UAE, nationwide, is embracing AI at all different levels of the stack in a way that's really inspiring and inspiring the company to do more with the UAE and in the UAE. One of the things we announced around bringing Copilot in-country processing, but also the outcomes that we see from some of these use cases -- we see that through this partnership with the incredible vision and the ability to execute from the UAE with turning these promises into actions. And we're moving from not only embracing AI to creating AI from the UAE to the world.

There are a lot of partnerships that Microsoft has signed -- some at GITEX, some before, with G42 and government entities. What is the strategy that drives that?

If we want to be true to democratisng access to AI, to make sure that no one is left behind, there's no way but partnerships and many different ecosystems. It will take a joint efforts to build that.

A great example is exactly our strategic partnership with G42, because it cuts across so many levels to make sure that nobody is left behind. It means we need that infrastructure with a global scale, right? Which means we need partnerships like this to make sure that we're building responsible AI that's inclusive. You need partnerships that drive what it means in terms of responsible standards for AI and security to make sure that there is this global access. You need also applications and platforms that scale while you have the right security boundaries.

And I think here in the UAE, we are lucky to see these nationwide examples of this -- from applications like TAMM, where 1,100 government services are already automated, empowered and enabled by AI or how the Department of Health is embracing AI. And there are so many examples in between.

At GITEX, everybody was very excited about Microsoft's presence. And this was your first GITEX in this role. What did you showcase?

I think there were four key standout features at GITEX GLOBAL this year.

First, there was a thought leadership element around agentic AI. And the intention for us at GITEX was way beyond just a technology exhibition. It was truly a platform to showcase the roadmap and what's coming ahead and to work through the ecosystem. That's why this one was so important in terms of cutting-edge technology -- to show the AI-powered future, what it means to have this agentic AI, and how executives, employees, government officials, you name it, can make use of such technology.

Then there was an element around partnerships. We were honoured to have 37 of our business partners who were together with us that had built on top of the platform. So that would have been my second stop for visitors. They could go past our departments because they were -- this is the beauty of partnerships -- very specialised, very specific solutions that fix very specific problems or help get certain outcomes.

Then the third stop: skills. This is where visitors could find a whole track of how we're enabling skills on different technical topics.

And last but not least was back to the mission. With our Copilot+ PCs or Surface Copilot+ PCs , that was the point where individuals could get their hands around the power of AI and access to AI.

There's obviously a lot of opportunities that you've been tapping. In terms of challenges -- the skill gap, the talent gap, developing skill sets -- how is Microsoft enabling and empowering local economies to address that?

This is a great question. Because if you think back to the access of AI and what are the different pillars, infrastructure is one, skills is another. Because at the end of the day, it boils down to our capability and the human capital to embrace AI and maximise the use of this to enhance our capability. And to do this effectively, you need to enable skills at scale.

Tell us about the values that drive you.

Empowerment becomes super important. And I think it's a notion that is very much in the DNA of us as a company, a notion of having a culture of empowerment so that everybody can bring their A game to the job. There is an environment and culture that enables everyone to be at their best the way they are. So that's important. That's something for me as a value that I think of every day.

Personally, for me, there's so much inspiration in the vision we talked about and in what we're doing every day to shape such a future.

I think it's so rewarding when you work with governments, with different organisations and see that some of these use cases are yielding results and outcomes that help every individual -- be it a learner, be it a patient, or a resident who wants to have a service. It's such a fulfilling feeling, to be honest. And that's where the inspiration keeps going.