Dubai swaps apps for AI agents in its race to lead the next wave of tech

One team flew 55 hours from Nicaragua for a shot at the title. They made the journey, says Saeed Al Gergawi, Vice President of Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy, "because they know that Dubai provides them with the right platform to be able to serve global economies".

It is a long way to travel for an app competition. But this is no longer just an app competition. Three editions in, the Create Apps Championship is reinventing itself. It returns as the Create AI Agents Championship, a global race to build systems that don't just answer questions but carry out tasks and make decisions on their own.

Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, announced the switch, as this year's winners were honoured on 7 October. The ambition is stated plainly: "making Dubai the first city to lead innovation in this field."

From Dubai to 153 countries

The growth has been rapid. Launched as a local contest in 2023, it has drawn 15,564 applications from 153 countries. This year alone brought 9,754, more than the first two editions combined.

It has helped produce 1,700 prototypes and more than 140 live apps. According to Al Gergawi, more than 250 mentors from around the world have been involved. It began as a local competition. The second and third editions opened it to the world, and the third drew entrants from as far as Central America. Now the brief is bigger.

Beyond the chatbot

The shift follows technology, and it is a big one. A chatbot answers a question. An AI agent can be given a goal and left to work towards it, checking, booking, filing and following up with limited human input.

For a competition built on apps, it is a natural next step. Apps put services on the phone. Agents can use those services on the user's behalf.

Founders who have already been through the championship are now building with the technology. For Rakesh Mavath, co-founder of Takeem, a winner from the first edition, the case is simple. "Agentic AI matters for one simple reason. It's ease of use of the consumer." Much of it is invisible. "We also use a lot of agentic AI in the backend to help with administration, content marketing, go-to-market, but that's the part that the public doesn't see."

The Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy runs the championship, one of three chambers under Dubai Chambers, set up to attract digital companies, talent, and investment to the emirate. The new format is part of a wider push to accelerate agentic AI use across Dubai's business community.

'To serve humanity'

Entrants must find a real problem, build an AI agent to solve it, test its impact and show how it could become a business. Al Gergawi wants the championship "to provide the platform for anyone with an idea, any business, to be able to be on the level field with the world". "Ultimately what we want to do is we want to be able to use agentic AI as tools to serve humanity and to serve global economies," he says.

The appeal for smaller players is productivity. AI tools, he says, allow companies "to be able to accelerate and increase their productivity, be it small startups, being able to compete with large corporates, thanks to AI tools and agentic AI."

But productivity is not the only test. "What we're trying to do here that is unique is to ensure that all of the participants and anyone that applies does so to positively impact humanity as a whole, businesses, and society."

Years into months

Speed is the selling point. The idea is that innovators prove a concept in Dubai, then take it home. Dubai wants to "become a platform for global innovators, anyone that has just an idea, to be able to test it and then be able to deploy it in their own markets, in their home geographies," says Al Gergawi.

The target is to shrink a journey that usually takes years into less than six months.

Age is no barrier

There is no minimum age to enter, and no need to write a line of code. Teenagers can go head-to-head with start-ups and established firms, and Al Gergawi believes that gives them an edge, not a handicap.

Their advantage, he says, comes "by being young and being able to move much faster". "So, keeping an eye on tomorrow's economy, it's important to foster the right culture and to involve the youth early on."

The stakes are high. Each of the four category winners, covering societal, personal, business and youth agents, receives around €128,000 (AED 550,000), and one goes on to be named AI Agent of the Year, with around €232,000 (AED 1 million). The first three editions asked entrants to build an app. The next will ask whether their agents can do the work themselves.