AI, Climatetech Take Center Stage at Expand North Star 2024

The first two days of Expand North Star 2024, the world’s largest startup and investment event, drew thousands of visitors to Dubai Harbour, focusing on innovations that shape the future of technology and investment. The opening day centered on discussions regarding cross-border collaboration in Europe, untapped digital potential, and the opportunities for climatetech unicorns to address global challenges.  

At a session on the event’s first day, Sebastian Schäfer, CEO of House of Finance and Tech Berlin, discussed investment trends in Europe with panelists from France, Italy, Poland, and Portugal.  

In a panel titled “Connected for Success: The Power of Cross-border Collaboration in Europe,” Schäfer called for newfound cross-continental collaboration between European nations, citing the vast “untapped potential” across digital space. He said: “As countries, we don’t collaborate. We need real joint value propositions for tangible success and use cases that help us to work together. We have the ingredients needed to compete with the big tech companies from China and the US – but we need [novel] ways to utilize advantages, harness talent, and create future unicorn factories. There’s so much untapped potential waiting to be explored.”   

Europe and the UK have a notable presence at this year's edition of Expand North Star, with over 1,000 SMEs and 450 startups from 35 countries taking part.   

On Sunday afternoon, a talk titled “Climate Tech Unicorns: Valuation, Volatility, and Venture Capital,” saw Sean O’Sullivan, founder of US venture capital firm SOSV – the world’s most active climate tech investor – address the opportunities at hand for the climate tech unicorns of tomorrow. 

O'Sullivan said: “Climate change is an urgent, existential crisis for humanity – and unsustainable, nonsensical business models cannot continue. There are opportunities for tens of thousands of startups to immediately begin solving our problems and reinventing society – becoming profitable over time. Open AI was founded in 2015 and was going nowhere until recently. Now it’s the most valuable company in the world. With perseverance, companies can suddenly be worth hundreds of billions – even trillions – of dollars.”  

The second day of Expand North Star showcased AI and emerging technology solutions and facilitated discussions about the strategic partnerships that drive innovation. It also highlighted Asia’s future tech companies, efforts to support the growth of Emirati ICT businesses, and how AI is being used for good. 

Taiwanese startups made a significant impact on the second day, with AISpeakin, powered by Ubestream, showcasing its AI deep tech capabilities, which allow it to provide real-time translation in over 16 languages and employ advanced AI and speech recognition features. 

The space sector was represented by Japan’s DigitalBlast Inc., which is developing a life science experiment device with an artificial gravity mechanism for use aboard the International Space Station (ISS). This project is a step towards launching the ISS's first module by 2030. 

Supporting Emirati businesses, the Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development (KFED) announced its backing for four outstanding UAE companies, enhancing the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the ICT sector. 

The event also included insightful ecosystem discussions, such as the “UAE Hubs Panel - Building Impactful Ecosystems,” where director of healthcare quality at the Abu Dhabi Health Authority Asma Ibrahim Al Mannaei emphasized the importance of partnerships in creating a data informatics system that benefits startups. 

As part of a Monday afternoon talk, "AI by the People, AI for the People: Democratising AI and Solving Grassroot Innovation," Manu Chopra, founder and CEO of India’s SaaS-based all-in-one business management software provider Karya, shared insights about Karya's collaboration with Microsoft to develop a generative large language model (LLM) that reflects India's 125 languages. The project, one of the largest multilingual human evaluations of LLMs conducted so far, involved more than 90,000 human evaluations of 30 models in 10 Indian languages over three weeks. For the project, Karya hired regional language speakers, who were paid by Microsoft at a rate 20 times higher than the minimum wage. During a visit to India, Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella, personally met with one of these speakers. 

Expand North Star 2024 brings together 59 unicorns, valued collectively at US$400 billion. This year’s edition features NS Scaleups, a program that connects late-stage startups with partners and venture capitalists. It also debuts Tech Transfer 3.0, an initiative that brings together leading research institutions and universities such as IE University, University College London, Johns Hopkins University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The initiative aims to bridge the gap between scientific research and real-world applications, fostering collaboration between tech experts, academics, and engineers.  

This year's edition also features GITEX YouthX Unipreneur, an event organized by Unipreneur that fosters youth collaboration and empowerment through entrepreneurship, innovation, and academia.   

Expand North Star 2024, recognized as one of the largest startup and investment events, kicked off at Dubai Harbour on October 13 and will run until October 16. This edition of Expand North Star includes participants from over 100 countries, has over 1,800 exhibiting startups, and 1,200 investors managing assets exceeding $1 trillion.