Every week another Silicon Valley founder lands in Doha with the same question: “Is Qatar serious about AI?” Our answer at Al Rabban Capital is always the same: Qatar isn’t catching up; it’s building the runway everyone else will land on.
- The $2.5 bn “AI Campus” nobody talks about Hidden inside Lusail City is a 1.2 million sq ft zone where electricity is subsidized, data-center cooling is free, and every server enjoys 100 Gbps dark fiber. The catch? You need a local partner who speaks regulator. That’s us.
- The 72-hour company license (yes, really) Last month we spun up QuantumQatar LLC for a Boston-based quantum-AI startup. Paperwork timestamp: Monday 09:14 → Wednesday 09:14. The Ministry loves deals that carry the Al Rabban name.
- Talent that stays McKinsey says 68 % of expat AI PhDs leave the UAE within 18 months. In Qatar the number is 12 %. Reason? Golden visas tied to joint ventures, zero income tax, and schools that beat Singapore on PISA math scores.
Real case In Q2 we closed a $45 m Series B for a Tel Aviv computer-vision scale-up. The round was 60 % Qatari family offices, 40 % Saudi PIF. The company now trains its models on QF’s 42-petaflop supercomputer—rented at 30 % below AWS spot prices.
CTA Ready to park your GPUs where the sand is cool and the capital is hot? Drop us a line → partnerships@alrabbancapital.com