Riyadh - The 7th edition of the Future Investment Initiative (FII7) concluded Thursday in Riyadh. The final day of FII7 highlighted the new frontiers of investment and technology, focusing on space & aviation, biotech, cybersecurity, robotics, venture capital, start-up nations and more.

A special AI summit was undertaken, as a part of the FII7, featuring a discussion on global AI regulations, by Dr. Eric Daimler, Co-Founder & CEO of Conexus, Michael Kratsios, Managing Director of Scale AI and Sebastian Kurz, Former Federal Chancellor of the Republic of Austria.

Other speakers included John Curtius, Founder Cedar Investment Management, Laurence Moroney, Lead AI Advocate at Google and Rami Qasem, EVP and Chief Commercial Officer, Beyond Limits.
The AI summit discussed recent data from Goldman Sachs Economics indicated that by 2025, AI-related global investment could reach $200 billion, reflecting AI’s game-changing potential to revolutionize productivity and reshape business processes as it moves into broader economic and societal use.

Nicolas Carey, co-founder and Vice Chairman of Blockchain.com said: “AI and the future of financial services will be highly correlated. It’s not a coincidence that technologies like blockchain and AI are emerging simultaneously. They are highly symbiotic; you need to have a lot of informatics and a lot of ability and ability to understand what these informatics are revealing to you.”

The discussions covered how global regulatory agencies, national legislators and standard development organisations are beginning to develop frameworks to maximize AI’s benefits to society, whilst mitigating known, and unknown, risks.

As a part of the FII7 summits, a special Global South Carbon Markets session united stakeholders from the Global South under the banner of mutual collaboration to set a collective agenda and define desired outcomes ahead of COP 28.

The executive-level conference served as a platform for the Global South to come together with the shared goal of shaping the internal carbon market frameworks that align with their climate objectives and support biodiversity conservation, all within the context of advancing climate justice on a global scale.

On the final day of FII7, the Institute also unveiled its Inclusive ESG Tool and Score at the annual FII flagship conference to improve the quality of data on ESG in emerging markets and empower companies in these markets to receive financial flows. The initiative has been developed in partnership with ESG Book, a global leader in sustainability data and technology.

The FII Institute’s Inclusive ESG Tool has been developed to empower companies in these markets and improve sustainability efforts and results while helping investors identify current and future performance leaders.

With the total value of investments made at FII7 reaching $17.9 billion by the end of Day 3, the conference saw globally-relevant announcements in a variety of sectors. The Public Investment Fund announced its partnership with Italian tire manufacturer Pirelli, which committed to creating local manufacturing capabilities by building a tire manufacturing facility in Saudi Arabia. ACWA Power signed a financing agreement for a 240MW wind power project in Azerbaijan with the European Bank for Reconstruction & Development and OPEC Fund for International Development.
Richard Attias, CEO of the Future Investment Initiative Institute commented on the conclusion of the FII7 and said: “Over the past three days we have had world leaders, titans of finance and experts in their field who have not only been discussing, but identifying and agreeing to radical action to improve the investment landscape, boost economies, galvanise support, and ultimately improve the world. FII is soon to move from the Middle East to the Far East with our FII PRIORITY Summit in Hong Kong on December 7th and 8th and we will be continuing our mission to transform the lives – and futures – of human beings worldwide.”