DUBAI – Thirty innovators, including 22 startups and eight AI development professionals, presented breakthrough AI-powered solutions at the UAE’s first Llama Design Drive Demo Day during an exclusive event at the Dubai Future Foundation. Meta’s AI accelerator program, developed in partnership with Dubai Future Foundation and powered by Startupbootcamp, culminated with 19 teams showcasing real-world applications for some of the UAE’s leading companies, including Emirates Airline, Chalhoub Group, Dubai Holding, and the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA).

During the four weeks of the program, startups and individual engineers received support from Meta to build prototypes using Meta’s open-source large language model Llama 3.2 engine to solve seven different challenges presented by corporate partners.

Each company presented key challenges to be addressed by the cohort’s solutions while highlighting the vast potential of AI to transform industries. Emirates Airline is presenting a challenge to remove travel anxiety for people with disabilities and senior travelers, Indigo Hive, a startup specializing in intelligent automation, presented “MyTravelGuide,” a conversational chatbot on WhatsApp developed by retraining Llama to provide expert guidance to travelers with accessibility needs.

Icom Innovation introduced “Ike,” an AI companion that ensures end-to-end accessibility support, combining real-time data verification and Llama multimodal capabilities to give personalized guidance for travelers with disabilities.

Chalhoub Group is looking to address the challenge of customer sentiment analysis, a Dubai-based AI company Transcend Technologies developed “Chalhoub Analytics,” a platform that harnesses Llama 3 deep learning to better analyze brand and store performance and provide actionable insights to luxury brands. Fitch Technologies addressed inventory management challenges by showcasing “FocastIQ,” a tool that leverages predictive analytics to optimize inventory, reducing overstock and stockouts.

Dubai Holding is aiming to enhance sustainability and improve emissions calculations, CarbonSifr introduced a multi-agent AI solution that automates GHG emissions tracking and reporting, leveraging localized supply chain data and integrating Llama AI for enhanced data processing and insights generation. This platform aids Dubai Holding’s sustainability goals with actionable insights based on localized carbon data.

Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) is looking to aid in improving decision making and optimizing routes, Ahmad Joudi, a Business Intelligence Engineer at Amazon, created an AI chatbot that simplifies mobility data, providing RTA analysts with direct insights, improving access to local transportation data and aiding in efficient decision-making.

Another startup Byanat developed a platform that leverages mobility data from multiple sources to enhance user interactions through an AI-driven chat. A data-analytics startup Oryx presented “TransfeX,” which uses Llama data processing capabilities to enhance public transportation efficiency by analyzing and optimizing route connections.

The Llama Design Drive Demo Day marked a milestone in UAE’s AI sector, underscoring the strategic importance of open-source AI in building solutions with commercial and social impact.

Abdulaziz AlJaziri, Deputy CEO of Dubai Future Foundation said, “Dubai Future Foundation partners with global technology giants under its efforts to enhance Dubai’s startup ecosystem. This latest partnership with Meta is bringing some of the UAE’s largest national enterprises together with innovative startups to solve challenges in line with the objectives of Dubai’s economic and social agendas. We are proud to champion efforts that inspire bold thinking and reinforce Dubai’s position as a platform for piloting and scaling ingenious ideas.”

Joulan Abdul Khalek, Policy Programs Manager, Africa Middle East and Turkiye at Meta added, “This initiative illustrates the power of open-source AI to bring people together to solve complex challenges with innovation. The use cases presented today are truly impressive, demonstrating creativity, technical skill, and a deep understanding of industry needs. We’re proud to support these pioneering teams, whose work will not only make a difference here in the UAE but will also inspire future AI innovations across the broader region and the world.”

Llama Design Drive

Llama Design Drive is an innovative acceleration program tailored to empower startups by connecting them with industry leaders to solve real-world challenges using AI. This program offers startups the unique opportunity to collaborate with leading corporations, tackling complex business challenges through AI-driven solutions. By fostering these collaborations, Llama Design Drive accelerates the development of impactful AI technologies and plays a pivotal role in advancing the UAE’s position as a global leader in artificial intelligence.

For more information, please visit www.llamadesigndrive.com