UAE-Based Govtech Startup 01Gov Bags AED1.5 Million Credit Guarantee From The Mohammed Bin Rashid Innovation Fund

Dubai-based govtech startup 01Gov has secured a AED1.5 million (US$408,441) credit guarantee from the Mohammed Bin Rashid Innovation Fund (MBRIF), an initiative launched by the UAE Ministry of Finance to support the country's innovation ecosystem. 

The financing will support the development of 01Gov's artificial intelligence (AI)-powered platform, helping the company expand its operations, meet growing demand from government entities, and advance the UAE's efforts to enhance government development and performance. It will also accelerate the development of One, the company's agentic AI system, while strengthening the capabilities of the 01Gov Platform for existing clients. 

Founded in Dubai in 2013 by Ibrahim Ahmed El Badawi, and later joined by Dr. Saeed Al Dhaheri and Mohamed Elbadawi as Founding Partners, 01Gov develops cloud-based digital tools that help government entities track emerging global trends, conduct benchmarking studies, access international best practices, generate ideas, run innovation labs, and support continuous learning through web and mobile applications. 

The company's name reflects the philosophy behind its creation. Inspired by the concept outlined by renowned venture capitalist Peter Thiel in his book Zero to One, which argues that progress comes from creating new solutions rather than replicating existing ones, 01Gov was established to help government entities pursue new approaches to innovation. The company summarizes that vision through its slogan, "Future Now," with that mindset closely tied to its broader mission of creating meaningful public impact. Reflecting on the company's purpose, El Badawi, founder and CEO of 01Gov, told Inc. Arabia, "01Gov is our way to make this world a better place and improve people's lives. When we help a government entity improve even a single policy or service, we have the potential to improve the lives of thousands, if not millions, of people." 

Commenting on the significance of MBRIF now coming in to support the enterprise, Dr. Al Dhaheri, Founding Partner at 01Gov, said, "We are humbled and proud that the story of 01Gov and our team is now linked to the name of HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, a leader whose name has remained synonymous with the future, with the boldness to imagine it, the innovation to design it, and the initiative to execute it. MBRIF's endorsement means that government entities across the UAE and the GCC see that our solution has been stress-tested and validated by a government-linked fund that understands the public sector deeply. That elevates our conversations with prospective clients and strengthens our standing with existing ones." 

Beyond the endorsement itself, Dr. Al Dhaheri views the timing of the announcement as part of a wider transformation taking place across the UAE government. "It comes only weeks after HH announced his bold directive to integrate agentic AI across 50 percent of UAE government services and operations within two years," he noted. "We had already launched One in February 2026, what we believe to be the world's first AI agent dedicated specifically to government development, built on a rich, high-quality knowledge base that we have been constructing in close collaboration with UAE government entities for over a decade. The MBRIF announcement sends a clear signal to the market that 01Gov's technology is not catching up to this moment; it was built for it." 

Those developments mirror changes that 01Gov has witnessed firsthand over more than a decade of working with government organizations. "The shift we have observed over the past decade is one of deepening accountability," El Badawi said. "The UAE has long embedded innovation and digital transformation as measurable government priorities. What has changed is the intensity and ambition of those expectations. Mandates that were once bold and aspirational have become increasingly precise, measurable, and non-negotiable." 

The MBRIF and 01Gov teams.

According to El Badawi, the COVID-19 pandemic marked a major turning point in how government entities approached digital innovation, with many organizations demonstrating a greater readiness to adopt technology-driven solutions and adapt to new ways of working. "The second major shift is the gradual move away from consultant-led transformation toward scalable platform-led solutions," he continued. "The COVID-19 crisis accelerated this irreversibly—and we saw it directly. During the pandemic, as consulting engagements stalled and in-person activities ground to a halt, demand for the 01Gov platform surged. Government entities that had been cautious about digital-first tools suddenly needed a way to track global innovation trends, benchmark against peers, and keep their employees engaged with fresh thinking. In April 2020, just weeks after lockdown went into effect, we designed and ran the first Virtual Innovation Lab in the Middle East, bringing together participants from across UAE federal and local government entities. The story was widely celebrated both in the UAE and internationally. It was a signal that the old model had a credible alternative." 

While technology adoption has since advanced significantly in public institutions, El Badawi suggested that an important gap remains at their hearts still. "The biggest untapped opportunity, in our view, is institutional knowledge management," he said. "Every government entity holds years of accumulated knowledge in the minds of its people, in legacy documents, and in completed project archives, and almost none of it is structured, searchable, or usable in real time. As AI matures, the organizations that will lead in government performance will be those that have activated their institutional knowledge as a living asset rather than a buried archive. That is precisely the gap that One, our Gov AI Agent, was built to address. Over the next five years, we expect agentic AI, Arabic-native content infrastructure, and predictive foresight tools to become the defining layer of how advanced governments operate." 

It's worth noting here that 01Gov's ambition will be unfolding against the backdrop of an increasingly ambitious AI agenda across the UAE. "As we step into the age of agentic AI, HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid made the ambition unmistakable," Dr. Al Dhaheri noted. "The UAE will lead—with 50 percent of government operations powered by agentic AI within two years. His Highness also declared that all federal government employees will be transformed into experts in this field through continuous specialized training, with the goal of producing the best AI transformation specialists in government anywhere in the world. We built the 01Gov Platform and One for exactly such moments. This bold directive means that every government entity in the UAE now faces not one urgent question, but several simultaneously: how do we implement agentic AI at scale? What infrastructure and data do we need to make it work? How do we rapidly build the skills and capabilities our employees need to lead this transformation rather than simply react to it? And how do we ensure responsible AI governance that maintains the public trust government depends on?" 

"These questions create an environment that is uniquely favorable for a platform like 01Gov," Dr. Al Dhaheri continued. "Agentic AI does not function effectively in a vacuum. It requires institutional knowledge, domain-specific content, and a deep understanding of how government entities make decisions and manage processes. A generic AI tool trained on publicly available internet content cannot navigate the nuances of UAE government policy development or GCC public sector culture. What is needed is an AI layer that is built on government-relevant knowledge, Arabic-capable, and designed for the specific workflows of public institutions. That is exactly what One delivers. Beyond the AI agent itself, the 01Gov Platform represents a critical enabler for every government entity navigating this transition. For years, it has been helping public sector organizations upskill their employees through successive waves of technological and organizational change. It will continue to do exactly that with agentic AI—and it is already doing so, actively deployed across multiple federal and local government entities in the UAE. When His Highness says he wants the best government AI experts in the world, we intend to be part of how that happens." 

The experience of building at the intersection of technology and government has also shaped the team's perspective on what it takes to succeed in the sector. Reflecting on the company's journey, Elbadawi, partner and Director of the UAE office, said, "The most important lesson we have learned over 13 years of building at the intersection of technology and government is that the product is never the hard part. The hard part is trust. Government entities move carefully, and rightly so. They are accountable to citizens, to national visions, and to institutional structures that have been built over decades. A founder who approaches government as simply another B2B sales channel will struggle. The founders who succeed are those who demonstrate, consistently and over time, that they understand the institution from the inside. Our team's background gave us an advantage we did not fully appreciate until we started building. Having worked as strategists and practitioners inside UAE government institutions, and having studied public administration at graduate level, we understood how government entities think, how decisions get made, and where transformation actually stalls. That shaped 01Gov's product, our content, our go-to-market approach, and, ultimately, our credibility with clients." 

Looking ahead, Dr. Al Dhaheri believes the company's latest milestone points to a much broader opportunity for innovation across the region's public sector technology landscape. "The govtech scene in the UAE and the wider Arab world is still in its early chapters," he said. "We hope this moment inspires many more Arab founders to build in this space. We are proud to be the first. We hope many will follow." 

Pictured in the lead image are 01Gov's (from left to right) Ibrahim Ahmed El Badawi, Saeed Al Dhaheri, and Mohamed Elbadawi. All images courtesy 01Gov.